the dance round
her, after the manner of Vivien and Merlin. Then came her supper, which,
like its predecessors, was a solid and absorbing meal; then one more
fairy story, to magnetize her off, and she danced and sang herself up
stairs. And if she first came to me in the morning with a halo round her
head, she seemed still to retain it when I at last watched her kneeling
in the little bed--perfectly motionless, with her hands placed together,
and her long lashes sweeping her cheeks--to repeat two verses of a hymn
which Janet had taught her. My nerves quivered a little when I saw that
Susan Halliday had also been duly prepared for the night, and had been
put in the same attitude, so far as her jointless anatomy permitted.
This being ended, the doll and her mistress reposed together, and only
an occasional toss of the vigorous limbs, or a stifled baby murmur,
would thenceforth prove, through the darkened hours, that the one figure
had in it more of life than the other.

On the next morning Kenmure and Laura came back to us, and I walked down
to receive them at the boat. I had forgotten how striking was their
appearance, as they stood together. His broad, strong, Saxon look, his
noble bearing and clear blue eyes, enhanced the fascination of her
darker beauty.

America is full of the short-lived bloom and freshness of girlhood; but
grace is a rarer gift, and indeed it is only a few times in life that
one sees anywhere a beauty that really controls us with a permanent
charm. One should remember such personal loveliness, as one recalls some
particular moonlight or sunset, with a special and concentrated joy,
which the multiplicity of fainter impressions cannot disturb. When in
those days we used to read, in Petrarch's one hundred and twenty-third
sonnet, that he had once beheld on earth angelic manners and celestial
charms, whose very remembrance was a delight and an affliction, since
all else that he beheld seemed dream and shadow, we could easily fancy
that nature had certain permanent attributes which accompanied the name
of Laura.

Our Laura had that rich brunette beauty before which the mere snow and
roses of the blonde must always seem wan and unimpassioned. In the
superb suffusions of her cheek there seemed to flow a tide of passions
and powers, which might have been tumultuous in a meaner woman, but over
which, in her, the clear and brilliant eyes, and the sweet, proud mouth,
presided in unbroken calm. These superb