t
and as long in the sleeves as the Puritan mothers ever wore to meeting.
In England she lapsed sufficiently from the rigid Salem standard to
adopt a timid compromise; in Scotland we coaxed her into still further
modernities, until now she is completely enfranchised. We achieved this
at considerable trouble, but do not grudge the time spent in persuasion
when we see her en grande toilette. In day dress she has always
been inclined ever so little to a primness and severity that suggest
old-maidishness. In her low gown of pale grey, with all her silver
hair waved softly, she is unexpectedly lovely,--her face softened,
transformed, and magically 'brought out' by the whiteness of her
shoulders and slender throat. Not an ornament, not a jewel, will she
wear; and she is right to keep the nunlike simplicity of style which
suits her so well, and which holds its own even in the vicinity of
Francesca's proud and glowing young beauty.

On this particular evening, Francesca, who wished her to look her best,
had prudently hidden her eyeglasses, for which we are now trying to
substitute a silver-handled lorgnette. Two years ago we deliberately
smashed her spectacles, which she had adopted at five-and-twenty.

"But they are more convenient than eye-glasses," she urged obtusely.

"That argument is beneath you, dear," we replied. "If your hair were not
prematurely grey, we might permit the spectacles, hideous as they are,
but a combination of the two is impossible; the world shall not convict
you of failing sight when you are guilty only of petty astigmatism!"

The grey satin had been chosen for this dinner, and Salemina was
dressed, with the exception of the pretty pearl-embroidered waist that
has to be laced at the last moment, and had slipped on a dressing jacket
to come down from her room in the second story, to be advised in some
trifling detail. She looked unusually well, I thought: her eyes were
bright and her cheeks flushed, as she rustled in, holding her satin
skirts daintily away from the dusty carpets.

Now, from the morning of our arrival we have had trouble with the
Mullarkey door-knobs, which come off continually, and lie on the floors
at one side of the door or the other. Benella followed Salemina from
her room, and, being in haste, closed the door with unwonted energy. She
heard the well-known rattle and clang, but little suspected that, as one
knob dropped outside in the hall, the other fell inside, carrying the
ro