en, you know, somehow or other, she always looks so well
in everything she wears,--even in the shabbiest things, and her things
are nearly always shabby enough, for they are dreadfully poor. She is
always finding new ways of wearing things or new ways of doing her hair
or--or something. It is the way her dresses fit, I think. Oh, dear, how
I do wish the dressmaker could make mine fit as hers do! Just look at
that white merino, now, for instance. It is the plainest dress in the
room, and there is not a bit of fuss or trimming about it, and yet
see how soft the folds look and how it hangs,--the train, you know.
It reminds me of a picture,--one of those pictures in fashionable
monthlies,--illustrations of love stories, you know."

"It is a very pretty dress," said young Mr. Jessup, eying it with great
interest. "What did you say the stuff was called?"

"Merino," answered Phemie.

"Merino," repeated Mr. Jessup. "I will try and remember. I should like
my sister Lucinda Maria to have a dress like it."

And he regarded it with growing admiration just tempered by the effect
of a mental picture of Lucinda Maria, who was bony and of remarkable
proportions, attired in its soft and flowing counterpart, with white
swan's-down adorning her bare shoulders.

"May I ask," said Miss MacDowlas, at the bottom of the table, to Lady
Augusta,--"may I ask who that young lady with the fresh completion
is,--the young lady in white at the other end?"

"That is my governess," replied her ladyship, freezingly. "Miss
Dorothea Crewe."

And Miss MacDowlas settled her eye-glass and gave Miss Dorothea Crewe
the benefit of a prolonged examination.

"Crewe," she said, at length. "Poor relation, I suppose?" with some
sharpness of manner. Dignity was lost upon Miss MacDowlas.

"A branch of my family who are no great credit to it," was the majestic
rejoinder.

"Oh, indeed," was the lady's sole remark, and then Miss MacDowlas
returned to her coffee, still, however, keeping her double eye-glass
across her nose and casting an occasional glance at Dolly.

And just at this particular moment Dolly was unconsciously sealing
Ralph Gowan's fate for him. Quite unconsciously, I repeat, for the
most serious of Dolly's iniquities were generally unconscious. When
she flirted, her flirtations were of so frank and open a nature, that,
bewildered and fascinated though her victims might be, they must have
been blind indeed to have been deceived, and so there were