dolorously round and round, and
tears stood in her eyes. Poor little girl, tears were never very far off
in those days.

And she must have thus sat for some time, and perhaps dozed off for a
minute or two, for a brisk tap at the door, and the bustling entrance of
a housemaid, admitted also the sound of the dressing gong, and both
seemed to follow close upon Sue's departing heels.

Dressing was an easy matter when there was no choice of attire and
adornments, and Leo's curly hair only needed to be combed through to
look as though it had been freshly arranged--so that though she had to
open her trunks, and had a moment's flurry before she could be certain
into which of these her solitary evening robe had been packed, she was
ready and downstairs before any one else.

The evening was got through somehow, and then there was the return march
through the long dim corridor to the antiquated apartment, and the
conviction that she should never be able to sleep in it, and then--? No
sooner had the weary little figure sunk down among the pillows and drawn
up the coverlid, than the sound, sweet slumber of youth and innocence
prevailed; and the mists were off the land and melting in the blue
October sky, long before Leo unclosed her eyes. Eventually she was
roused by the stable-clock striking eight beneath her window, and woke
to find the night was gone.

Have we said that Leo had a happy disposition? She had not merely that,
but a buoyant, recuperative, physical nature, which threw off every
adverse circumstance as a foreign element.

Even an ailment could not make her ill, even misfortune could not make
her miserable.

Experiencing either the one or the other she bent before it, but there
was a fount of bubbling vitality within, which it was impossible wholly
to repress.

So that when the little girl sat up in bed, and blinked her drowsy
eyes--still drowsy for all the long hours of dreamless, healthy
slumber--and when next she yawned and caught back a yawn in sudden
recognition of a familiar object unobserved before--and when again she
shook across her shoulders the thick plaits of hair on either side, and
pulled out the crumpled lace upon her nightgown cuffs, and finally
jumped up and ran to look what the day was like, it was perhaps as well
that nobody was there to spy upon the newly-made widow.

She actually laughed the next moment. Yes, she laughed as she sprang
upon the erst forbidden window-sill, and out of pure da