that
sadness in the mellow atmosphere of the Rectory dining-room. The tender
and touching stillness which her affliction had cast over her face,
seemed a little at variance with its childish immaturity of feature and
roundness of form, but harmonized exquisitely with the quiet smile which
seemed habitual to her when she was happy--gratefully and unrestrainedly
happy, as she now felt among the new friends who were receiving her, not
like a stranger and an inferior, but like a younger sister who had been
long absent from them.

She stood near the window, the center figure of the group, offering a
little slate that hung by her side, with a pencil attached to it, to the
rector's eldest daughter, who was sitting at her right hand on a stool.
The second of the young ladies knelt on the other side, with both her
arms round the dog's neck; holding him back as he stood in front of the
child, so as to prevent him from licking her face, which he had made
several resolute attempts to do, from the moment when she first entered
the room. Both the Doctor's daughters were healthy, rosy English
beauties in the first bloom of girlhood; and both were attired in
the simplest and prettiest muslin dresses, very delicate in color and
pattern. Pity and admiration, mixed with some little perplexity and
confusion, gave an unusual animation to their expressions; for they
could hardly accustom themselves as yet to the idea of the poor child's
calamity. They talked to her eagerly, as if she could hear and answer
them--while she, on her part, stood looking alternately from one to the
other, watching their lips and eyes intently, and still holding out
the slate, with her innocent gesture of invitation and gentle look of
apology, for the eldest girl to write on. The varying expressions of the
three; the difference in their positions, the charming contrast between
their light, graceful figures and the bulky strength and grand solidity
of form in the noble Newfoundland dog who stood among them; the lustrous
background of lawn and flowers and trees, seen through the open window;
the sparkling purity of the sunshine which fell brightly over one
part of the group; the transparency of the warm shadows that lay so
caressingly, sometimes on a round smooth cheek, sometimes over ringlets
of glistening hair, sometimes on the crisp folds of a muslin dress--all
these accidental combinations of the moment, these natural and elegant
positions of nature's setting, th