ter for a girl fresh from Confirmation,
and her cheeks with their fixed colour, which changed only at the
discretion of her maid, babbled of nothing that mattered, Hylda's mind
kept turning to the book of life an unhappy woman had left behind her.
The sitting-room had been that of the late Countess also, and on the
wall was an oil-painting of her, stately and distant and not very
alluring, though the mouth had a sweetness which seemed unable to break
into a smile.

"What was she really like--that wasn't her quite, was it?" asked Hylda,
at last, leaning her chin on the hand which held the 'cello she had been
playing.

"Oh, yes, it's Sybil Eglington, my dear, but done in wood; and she
wasn't the graven image that makes her out to be. That's as most people
saw her; as the fellow that painted her saw her; but she had another
side to her. She disapproved of me rather, because I was squeezing the
orange dry, and trying to find yesterday's roses in to-morrow's garden.
But she didn't shut her door in my face--it's hard to do that to a
Duchess; which is one of the few advantages of living naked in the
street, as it were, with only the strawberry leaves to clothe you. No,
Sybil Eglington was a woman who never had her chance. Your husband's
forbears were difficult, my dear. They didn't exactly draw you out.
She needed drawing out; and her husband drove her back into her corner,
where she sulked rather till she died--died alone at Wiesbaden, with
a German doctor, a stray curate, and a stuttering maid to wish her bon
voyage. Yet I fancy she went glad enough, for she had no memories, not
even an affaire to repent of, and to cherish. La, la! she wasn't so
stupid, Sybil there, and she was an ornament to her own sex and the
despair of the other. His Serene Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden
fancied the task of breaking that ice, and he was an adept and an
Apollo, but it broke his reputation instead.

"No doubt she is happy now. I shall probably never see!"

In spite of the poignant nature of the talk, Hylda could not but smile
at the last words.

"Don't despair," she rejoined; "one star differeth from another star in
glory, but that is no reason why they should not be on visiting terms."

"My dear, you may laugh--you may laugh, but I am sixty-five, and I
am not laughing at the idea of what company I may be obliged to keep
presently. In any case I'm sure I shall not be comfortable. If I'm
where she is, I shall be dull; if I'm where