s
out of sight. "What animals we are, after all! The spiritual part of us
is at the mercy of the stomach. My heart is absorbed by tender thoughts,
yet I am not the less ready for luncheon! Come, my children and
fellow-mortals. _Allons cultiver notre jardin!"_

With this quotation from "Candide," plaintively delivered, the old lady
led the way out of the room, and was followed by her younger pupils.
The eldest sister remained behind for a moment, and reminded me that the
lunch was ready.

"I am afraid you have found the dear old soul rather an unruly sitter,"
she said, noticing the look of dissatisfaction with which I was
regarding my drawing. "But she will improve as you go on. She has done
better already for the last half-hour, has she not?"

"Much better," I answered. "My admiration of the miniature on the
bracelet seemed--I suppose, by calling up some old associations--to have
a strangely soothing effect on Mademoiselle Clairfait."

"Ah yes! only remind her of the original of that portrait, and you
change her directly, whatever she may have been saying or doing the
moment before. Sometimes she talks of _Sister Rose,_ and of all that she
went through in the time of the French Revolution, by the hour together.
It is wonderfully interesting--at least we all think so."

"I presume that the lady described as 'Sister Rose' was a relation of
Mademoiselle Clairfait's?"

"No, only a very dear friend. Mademoiselle Clairfait is the daughter
of a silk-mercer, once established at Chalons-sur-Marne. Her father
happened to give an asylum in his office to a lonely old man, to
whom 'Sister Rose' and her brother had been greatly indebted in the
revolutionary time; and out of a train of circumstances connected with
that, the first acquaintance between mademoiselle and the friend whose
portrait she wears, arose. After the time of her father's bankruptcy,
and for many years before we were placed under her charge, our good old
governess lived entirely with 'Sister Rose' and her brother. She must
then have heard all the interesting things that she has since often
repeated to my sisters and myself."

"Might I suggest," said I, after an instant's consideration, "that the
best way to give me a fair chance of studying Mademoiselle Clairfait's
face at the next sitting, would be to lead her thoughts again to that
quieting subject of the miniature, and to the events which the portrait
recalls? It is really the only plan, after what I have