on her part, and consisted at first in hopping up and down
on one spot, with no change of motion, but in her hands. She resembled
a minute and irrepressible Shaker, or a live and beautiful marionnette.
Then she placed Janet in the middle of the floor, And performed the
dance round her, after the manner of Vivien and Merlin. Then came her
supper, which, like its predecessors, was a solid and absorbing meal;
then one more fairy story, to magnetize her off, and she danced and
sang herself up stairs. And if she first came to me in the morning with
a halo round her head, she seemed still to retain it when I at last
watched her kneeling in the little bed--perfectly motionless, with her
hands placed together, and her long lashes sweeping her cheeks--to
repeat two verses of a hymn which Janet had taught her. My nerves
quivered a little when I saw that Susan Halliday had also been duly
prepared for the night, and had been put in the same attitude, so far
as her jointless anatomy permitted. This being ended, the doll and her
mistress reposed together, and only an occasional toss of the vigorous
limbs, or a stifled baby murmur, would thenceforth prove, through the
darkened hours, that the one figure had in it more of life than the
other.

On the next morning Kenmure and Laura came back to us, and I walked
down to receive them at the boat. I had forgotten how striking was
their appearance, as they stood together. His broad, strong, Saxon
look, his manly bearing and clear blue eyes, enhanced the fascination
of her darker beauty.

America is full of the short-lived bloom and freshness of girlhood; but
it is a rare thing in one's life to see a beauty that really controls
with a permanent charm. One must remember such personal loveliness, as
one recalls some particular moonlight or sunset, with a special and
concentrated joy, which the multiplicity of fainter impressions cannot
disturb. When in those days we used to read, in Petrarch's one hundred
and twenty-third sonnet, that he had once beheld on earth angelic
manners and celestial charms, whose very remembrance was a delight and
an affliction, since it made all else appear but dream and shadow, we
could easily fancy that nature had certain permanent attributes which
accompanied the name of Laura.

Our Laura had that rich brunette beauty before which the mere snow and
roses of the blonde must always seem wan and unimpassioned. In the
superb suffusions of her cheek there seemed to