m, so far as looks and talk were concerned.
Winthrop could but conclude that he was not interesting, for
neither of the ladies certainly found him so. He had an
excellent chance to make up his mind about the whole party;
for none of them gave him any thing else to do with it.

Rose was a piece of loveliness, to the eye, such as one would
not see in many a summer day; with all the sweet flush of
youth and health she was not ill-named. Fresh as a rose,
fresh-coloured, bright, blooming; sweet too, one would say,
for a very pretty smile seemed ever at home on the lips; -- to
see her but once, she would be noted and remembered as a most
rare picture of humanity. But Winthrop had seen her more than
once. His eye passed on.

Her cousin had changed for the better; though it might be only
the change which years make in a girl at that age, rather than
any real difference of character. She had grown handsomer. The
cheek was well rounded out now, and had a clear healthy tinge,
though not at all Rose's white and red. Elizabeth's colour
only came when there was a call for it and then it came
promptly. And she was not very apt to smile; when she did, it
was more often with a careless or scornful turn, or full and
bright with a sense of the ludicrous; never a loving or
benevolent smile, such as those that constantly graced Rose's
pretty lip. Her mouth kept its old cut of grave independence,
Winthrop saw at a glance; and her eye, when by chance she
lifted it and it met his, was the very same mixture of
coolness and fire that it had been of old; the fire for
herself, the coolness for all the rest of the world.

She looked down again at her netting immediately, but the look
had probably reminded her that nobody in her father's house
was playing the hostess at the moment. A disagreeable reminder
it is likely, for she worked away at her netting more
vigorously than ever, and it was two or three minutes before
her eyes left it again to take note of what Rose and Mr.
Satterthwaite were thinking about. Her look amused Winthrop,
it was so plain an expression of impatient indignation that
they did not do what they left her to do. But seeing they were
a hopeless case, after another minute or two of pulling at her
netting, she changed her seat for one on his side of the room.
Winthrop gave her no help, and she followed up her duty move
with a duty commonplace.

"How do you like Mannahatta, Mr. Landholm?"

"I have hardly asked myself the