but friendliness, appears followed by a staff of
old and young officers. Discipline and Court obsequiousness (in a small
army in time of peace courtiers alone are advanced to the higher
grades) have made the expression of his countenance as irreproachably
correct as that of an old dial-plate. Only there are moustaches on the
dials which two concealed strings at the back seem to jerk now into a
smile, now back to gravity again.

Some one called out, "Make room for the general," and in an instant a
wide opening was made between two saluting semicircles, suddenly parted
from each other.

Then it became possible to see the centre, which was formed of a group
of ladies, foremost amongst them a tall girl in a light travelling
costume and a white straw hat with a long white veil floating loosely
over it. Her hands were full of flowers; she kept receiving more and
more, which she handed through the crowd of ladies to her mother at the
carriage-door, who laid them aside. Now it could be seen by every one
that the two were mother and daughter. They were about the same height,
the daughter, if anything, taller than her mother; they had the same
large grey eyes, but with very different expression, although both
proclaimed the wide range of their inward dominion. The mother's told
of a deep comprehension of the contradictions and sufferings of life,
the daughter's of an ardent nature, of restless aspiration, of warring
forces which as yet had not found expression; they sparkled with
triumph, through which there gleamed now and then a lightning flash of
impatience. She was tall, slender, supple; her movements seemed to
reflect the radiance from her eyes. It was not with their own eyes that
others saw her, but through the light of her own. The look of energy in
her face was a powerful auxiliary in the spell her eyes exercised over
mankind. The mother's face was oval--of pure outline and broad design;
the daughter's was longer, sharper, the forehead higher and framed by
abundant light brown hair. Her eyebrows were straight, her nose was
aquiline, her chin decided, her lips firmly cut. The beauty of a
Valkyrie, but not so defiant. Her magnetic attraction came from
enthusiasm, from impulsiveness; the flame in her eyes was light, not
heat. On the whole, the impression she made was that she was borne up
by invisible forces; all who came under the spell of that impression
seemed to be lifted up as well. She talked to those on each side of