e lingeringly out, and as the servant removed her plate,
Elizabeth turned to look out of the window at the endless woods, a
shadow on her beautiful eyes.

She was slenderly made, with a small face and head round which the
abundant hair was very smoothly and closely wound. The hair was of a
delicate brown, the complexion clear, but rather colourless. Among other
young and handsome women, Elizabeth Merton made little effect; like a
fine pencil drawing, she required an attentive eye. The modelling of the
features, of the brow, the cheeks, the throat, was singularly refined,
though without a touch of severity; her hands, with their very long and
slender fingers, conveyed the same impression. Her dress, though dainty,
was simple and inconspicuous, and her movements, light, graceful,
self-controlled, seemed to show a person of equable temperament, without
any strong emotions. In her light cheerfulness, her perpetual interest
in the things about her, she might have reminded a spectator of some of
the smaller sea-birds that flit endlessly from wave to wave, for whom
the business of life appears to be summed up in flitting and poising.

The comparison would have been an inadequate one. But Elizabeth Merton's
secrets were not easily known. She could rave of Canada; she rarely
talked of herself. She had married, at the age of nineteen, a young
Cavalry officer, Sir Francis Merton, who had died of fever within a year
of their wedding, on a small West African expedition for which he had
eagerly offered himself. Out of the ten months of their marriage, they
had spent four together. Elizabeth was now twenty-seven, and her
married life had become to her an insubstantial memory. She had been
happy, but in the depths of the mind she knew that she might not have
been happy very long. Her husband's piteous death had stamped upon her,
indeed, a few sharp memories; she saw him always,--as the report of a
brother officer, present at his funeral, had described him--wrapped in
the Flag, and so lowered to his grave, in a desert land. This image
effaced everything else; the weaknesses she knew, and those she had
begun to guess at. But at the same time she had not been crushed by the
tragedy; she had often scourged herself in secret for the rapidity with
which, after it, life had once more become agreeable to her. She knew
that many people thought her incapable of deep feeling. She supposed it
must be true. And yet there were moments when a self wi