rplexed and wondering. Certainly he had not been prepared for this.
His _fiancee_ was undoubtedly of a somewhat stormy nature, and in the
midst of his bewilderment he was conscious of feeling deeply
reconciled to her ten years.

At length her father succeeded in quieting her, and, taking her arms
from his neck, he placed her on his knee, and said:

"My darling, here is a gentleman waiting all this time to speak to
you. Come, go over to him and shake hands with him."

At this the child turned her large black eyes on Guy, and scanned him
superciliously from head to foot. The result seemed to satisfy her,
for she advanced a few steps to take the hand which he had smilingly
held out; but a thought seemed suddenly to strike her which arrested
her progress half-way.

"Did _he_ keep you, papa?" she said, abruptly, while a jerk of her
head in Guy's direction signified the proper noun to which the
pronoun referred.

"He had something to do with it," answered her father, with a smile.

"Then I sha'n't shake hands with him," she said, resolutely; and,
putting the aforesaid appendages behind her back to prevent any
forcible appropriation of them, she hurried away, and clambered up on
her father's knee. The General, knowing probably by painful
experience the futility of trying to combat any determination of this
very decided young lady, did not attempt to make any remonstrance,
but allowed her to establish herself in her accustomed position.
During this process Guy had leisure to inspect her. This he did
without _any_ feeling of the immense importance of this child's
character to his own future life, without thinking that this little
creature might be destined to raise him up to heaven or thrust him
down to hell, but only with the idle, critical view of an
uninterested spectator. Guy was, in fact, too young to estimate the
future, and things which were connected with that future, at their
right value. He was little more than a boy, and so he looked with a
boy's eyes upon this singular child.

She struck him as the oddest little mortal that he had ever come
across. She was very tiny, not taller than many children of eight,
and so slight and fragile that she looked as if a breath might blow
her away. But if in figure she looked eight, in face she looked
fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a
thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her
features were small and pinched, her hair, whic