life for the last seven years to the
accomplishment of this melodious meandering. She left off playing, and
held out her small white hand to him as he came to the piano, after
shaking hands with his aunt.

What was she like, this paragon formed by a mother's worshipping love
and ceaseless care, this one last pearl in the crown of domestic life,
this child of so many prayers and hopes, and fears, and deep pathetic
rejoicings?

She was very fair to look upon--complete and beautiful as a pearl--with
that outward purity, that perfect delicacy of tint and harmony of
detail which is in itself a charm. Study her as captiously as you
would, you could find no flaw in this jewel. The small regular features
were so delicately chiselled, the fair fine skin was so transparent,
the fragile figure so exquisitely moulded, the ivory hand and arm so
perfect--no, you could discover no bad drawing or crude colouring in
this human picture. She lifted her clear blue eyes to Rorie's face, and
smiled at him in gentle welcome; and though he felt intensely cross at
having been summoned home like a school-boy, he could not refuse her a
responsive smile, or a gentle pressure of the taper fingers.

"And so you have been dining with those horrid people!" she exclaimed
with an air of playful reproach, "and on your last night in
Hampshire--quite too unkind to Aunt Jane."

"I don't know whom you mean by horrid people, Mabel," answered Rorie,
chilled back into sulkiness all at once; "the people I was with are all
that is good and pleasant."

"Then you've not been at the Tempests' after all?"

"I have been at the Tempests'. What have you to say against the
Tempests?"

"Oh, I have nothing to say against them," said Lady Mabel, shrugging
her pretty shoulders in her fawn-coloured silk gown. "There are some
things that do not require to be said."

"Mr. Tempest is the best and kindest of men; his wife is--well, a
nonentity, perhaps, but not a disagreeable one; and his daughter----"

Here Rorie came to a sudden stop, which Lady Mabel accentuated with a
silvery little laugh.

"His daughter is charming," she cried, when she had done laughing; "red
hair, and a green habit with brass buttons, a yellow waistcoat like her
papa's, and a rose in her button-hole. How I should like to see her in
Rotten Row!"

"I'll warrant there wouldn't be a better horse-woman or a prettier girl
there," cried Rorie, scarlet with indignation.

His mother looked daggers.