on overspread her features as she does so. "Marcia told
me of your arrival; I have heard of you also from other people; but
their opinion I must reserve until I have become your friend. At all
events, they did not lie in their description. No, you must not
cross-examine me; I will not tell what they said."

She is a decided addition to the household; they all find her so. Even
Mr. Longshanks brightens up, and makes a solitary remark at dinner;
but, as nobody catches it, he is hardly as unhappy as otherwise
assuredly he would have been.

After dinner she proves herself as agreeable in the drawing-room
(during that wretched half-hour devoid of men) as she had been when
surrounded by them, and chatters on to Marcia and Molly of all things
possible and impossible.

Presently, however, the conversation drifting toward people of whose
existence Molly has hitherto been unaware, she moves a little apart
from the other two, and amuses herself by turning over a book of
Byron's beauties; while wishing heartily those stupid men would weary
of their wine,--vain wish!

By degrees the voices on the other sofa wax fainter and fainter, then
rise with sudden boldness, as Marcia, secure in her French--says in
that language, evidently in answer to some remark, "No; just conceive
it,--she is totally uneducated, that is, in the accepted meaning of the
word. The very morning after her arrival she confessed to me she knew
nothing of French, nothing to signify of music, nothing, in fact, of
anything."

"But her air, her whole bearing,--it is inconceivable," says Lady
Stafford. "She must have had some education surely."

"She spoke of a National School! Consider the horror of it! I expect
her brother must be a very low sort of person. If she can read and
write it is as much as we need hope for. That is the worst of living in
one of those petty villages, completely out of society."

"What a pity, with her charming face and figure!" says Lady Stafford,
also (I regret to say) so far forgetting herself as to speak in the
language she believes falsely to be unknown to Molly.

"Yes, she is rather pretty," admits Marcia, against her will; "but
beauty when attached to ignorance is only a matter of regret, as it
seems to me."

"True," says Lady Stafford, pityingly, letting her eyes fall on Molly.

The latter, whose own eyes have been fixed vacantly on some distant and
invisible object outside in the dark garden, now rises, humming softly,
an