little out of the ordinary course, in their acquaintance, but the very mystery gave its charm—it was the one touch of poetry in their usually prosaic existence—and Mrs. Cranstoun was the very being about whom to imagine a romance. Slight and delicately formed, her figure was as childish as that of her young companions, but her movements lacked the buoyancy of youth; they were slow and languid, though graceful to a degree, that an artist might have studied. All that the girls knew of her was that she was born in Italy; and she had the pale complexion, whose dazzling whiteness was unbroken by the rose, and the large black eyes which mark southern beauty. She looked very young, but there was that about her, which told that time had not passed lightly over her; her years might be few, but they had been marked by those sorrows which steal sunshine from the eyes. A perpetual shadow seemed to weigh down those long dark eyelashes, as if heavy with the weight of unshed tears; and the lip had the sweetness of a smile, but not its gaiety.
She clung to the lovely children, as those cling to any interest that breaks upon a life otherwise monotonous. Their cheerfulness was the sunshine; she did not join in it, but she liked to see it. It never occurred to her to offer her young guests the amusements usual to their age, but she shared her own with them. They would sit whole mornings in the drawing-room, from whence daylight was carefully ex-
