ore than that she was nice to the
eye, but a young man who sees anything should not see like a mirror, and
a girl's instinct whispers to her, that her image has not been taken to
heart when she is accurately and impartially described by him.

The key to Rhoda at this period was a desire to be made warm with praise
of her person. She beheld her face at times, and shivered. The face was
so strange with its dark thick eyebrows, and peculiarly straight-gazing
brown eyes; the level long red under-lip and curved upper; and the chin
and nose, so unlike Dahlia's, whose nose was, after a little dip from the
forehead, one soft line to its extremity, and whose chin seemed shaped to
a cup. Rhoda's outlines were harder. There was a suspicion of a
heavenward turn to her nose, and of squareness to her chin. Her face,
when studied, inspired in its owner's mind a doubt of her being even nice
to the eye, though she knew that in exercise, and when smitten by a
blush, brightness and colour aided her claims. She knew also that her
head was easily poised on her neck; and that her figure was reasonably
good; but all this was unconfirmed knowledge, quickly shadowed by the
doubt. As the sun is wanted to glorify the right features of a landscape,
this girl thirsted for a dose of golden flattery. She felt, without envy
of her sister, that Dahlia eclipsed her: and all she prayed for was that
she might not be quite so much in the background and obscure.

But great, powerful London--the new universe to her spirit--was opening
its arms to her. In her half sleep that night she heard the mighty
thunder of the city, crashing, tumults of disordered harmonies, and the
splendour of the lamp-lighted city appeared to hang up under a dark-blue
heaven, removed from earth, like a fresh planet to which she was being
beckoned.

At breakfast on the Sunday morning, her departure was necessarily spoken
of in public. Robert talked to her exactly as he had talked to Dahlia, on
the like occasion. He mentioned, as she remembered in one or two
instances, the names of the same streets, and professed a similar anxiety
as regarded driving her to the station and catching the train. "That's a
thing which makes a man feel his strength's nothing," he said. "You can't
stop it. I fancy I could stop a four-in-hand at full gallop. Mind, I only
fancy I could; but when you come to do with iron and steam, I feel like a
baby. You can't stop trains."

"You can trip 'em," said Anthony