t the back of
the house. The room was lighted by one window looking out on a yard;
the walls were bare; the boarded floor was uncovered. Two bedroom chairs
stood against the wall, and a kitchen-table was placed under the window.
On the table stood a glass tank filled with water, and ornamented in the
middle by a miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced with weeds. Snails
clung to the sides of the tank; tadpoles and tiny fish swam swiftly in
the green water, slippery efts and slimy frogs twined their noiseless
way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on top of the pyramid there
sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the stone, motionless as the
stone, a little bright-eyed toad. The art of keeping fish and reptiles
as domestic pets had not at that time been popularized in England;
and Magdalen, on entering the room, started back, in irrepressible
astonishment and disgust, from the first specimen of an Aquarium that
she had ever seen.

"Don't be alarmed," said a woman's voice behind her. "My pets hurt
nobody."

Magdalen turned, and confronted Mrs. Lecount. She had expected--founding
her anticipations on the letter which the housekeeper had written to
her--to see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent old woman. She found
herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose
dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity,
whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical
resistance to the deteriorating influence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had
struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted
herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man in a
thousand, or one woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to believe
her. Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more. It was plainly
parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with mourning
ribbons. Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white forehead, or her
plump white cheeks. Her double chin was dimpled, and her teeth were
marvels of whiteness and regularity. Her lips might have been critically
considered as too thin, if they had not been accustomed to make the best
of their defects by means of a pleading and persuasive smile. Her large
black eyes might have looked fierce if they had been set in the face of
another woman, they were mild and melting in the face of Mrs. Lecount;
they were tenderly interested in everything she looked at--in Magdalen,
in the toad