reflection the manager touched Mrs. Drupe's letter of
complaint to the flame, and it was presently reduced to everlasting
illegibility.

PRISCILLA.

The trained novel readers, those who have made a business of it (if any
such should honor this poor little story with their attention), will
glance down the opening paragraphs for a description of the heroine's
tresses. The opening sentences of Miss Braddon are enough to show how
important a thing a head of hair is in the getting up of a heroine for
the popular market. But as my heroine is not a got-up one, and as I can
not possibly remember even the color of her hair or her eyes as I
recall her now, I fear I shall disappoint the professionals, who never
feel that they have a complete heroine till the "long waving tresses of
raven darkness, reaching nearly to the ground, enveloping her as with a
cloud," have been artistically stuck on by the author. But be it known
that I take Priscilla from memory, and not from imagination. And the
memory of Priscilla, the best girl in the school, the most gifted, the
most modest, the most gentle and true, is a memory too sacred to be
trifled with. I would not make one hair light or dark, I would not
change the shading of the eyebrows. Priscilla is Priscilla forever, to
all who knew her. And as I can not tell the precise color of her hair
and eyes, I shall not invent a shade for them. I remember that she was
on the blond side of the grand division line. But she was not blond.
She was--Priscilla. I mean to say that since you never lived in that
dear old-fogy Ohio River village of New Geneva, and since,
consequently, you never knew our Priscilla, no words of mine can make
you exactly understand her. Was she handsome? No--yes. She was
"jimber-jawed"--that is, her lower teeth shut a little outside her
upper. Her complexion was not faultless. Her face would not bear
criticism. And yet there is not one of her old schoolmates that will
not vow that she was beautiful. And indeed she was. For she was
Priscilla. And I never can make you understand it.

As Priscilla was always willing to oblige any one, it was only natural
that Mrs. Leston should send for her to help entertain the marquis. It
was a curious chance that threw the young Marquis d'Entremont for a
whole summer into the society of our little village. His uncle, who was
his guardian, a pious _abbe_, wishing to remove him from Paris to get
him out of socialistic influences, had s