aside that
fine blush which she brought into the room, and which was her pretty
symbol of youth and modesty and beauty.

He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his brown palm,
where it looked all the whiter; he cleared the grizzled moustache from
his mouth, and stooping down he kissed the little white hand with a great
deal of grace and dignity, after which he was forever the humble and
devoted admirer of that bright young girl.

Raising himself from his salute, he heard a pretty little infantile
chorus. "How do you do, uncle?" said girls number two and three, while
the dancing baby in the arms of the bobbing nurse babbled a welcome.
Alfred looked up for a while at his uncle in the white trousers, and then
instantly proposed that Clive should make some drawings; and was on his
knees at the next moment. He was always climbing on somebody or
something, or winding over chairs, curling through bannisters, standing
on somebody's head, or his own head; as his convalescence advanced, his
breakages were fearful. Miss Honeyman and Hannah talked about his
dilapidations for years after. When he was a jolly young officer in the
Guards, and came to see them at Brighton, they showed him the blue dragon
Chayny jar on which he would sit, and over which he cried so fearfully
upon breaking it.

When this little party had gone out smiling to take its walk on the sea
shore, the Colonel from his balcony watched the slim figure of pretty
Ethel, looked fondly after her, and as the smoke of his cigar floated in
the air, formed a fine castle in it, whereof Clive was Lord, and Ethel
Lady. "What a frank, generous, bright young creature is yonder!" thought
he. "How cheering and gay she is; how good to Miss Honeyman, to whom she
behaved with just the respect that was the old lady's due. How
affectionate with her brothers and sisters! What a sweet voice she had!
What a pretty little white hand it is! When she gave it me, it looked
like a little white bird lying in mine."

Thus mused the Colonel, upon the charms of the young girl who was
henceforth to occupy the first place in his affection.

His admiration for her might have been still further heightened had he
been at Lady Ann's breakfast table some four or five weeks later, when
Lady Ann and her nursery had just returned to London, little Alfred being
perfectly set up by a month of Brighton air. Barnes Newcome had just
discovered an article in the Newcome Independent commenting