vening, lay there in such
quantity as to endanger the tidiness of a retreat which was indeed only
saved from a chronic state of litter by a pair of hands that sometimes
played, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-machine standing
in a remote corner--if any corner could be called remote in a room so
small.

Fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterfly
flutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's cheek
as he sat. Presently, and all at once, a much greater intentness
pervaded his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject that
had arrested his eyes. He was a man whose countenance varied with his
mood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. He looked sad
when he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful.
It is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences.

A faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he opened
the door and exclaimed, 'Faith! will you come here for a moment?'

A prompt step was heard on the stairs, and the young person addressed as
Faith entered the room. She was small in figure, and bore less in the
form of her features than in their shades when changing from expression
to expression the evidence that she was his sister.

'Faith--I want your opinion. But, stop, read this first.' He laid his
finger upon a page in the book, and placed it in her hand.

The girl drew from her pocket a little green-leather sheath, worn at the
edges to whity-brown, and out of that a pair of spectacles, unconsciously
looking round the room for a moment as she did so, as if to ensure that
no stranger saw her in the act of using them. Here a weakness was
uncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one; indeed, as
weaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been called a
commendable trait. She then began to read, without sitting down.

These 'Metres by E.' composed a collection of soft and marvellously
musical rhymes, of a nature known as the vers de societe. The lines
presented a series of playful defences of the supposed strategy of
womankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage--the whole teeming with
ideas bright as mirrors and just as unsubstantial, yet forming a
brilliant argument to justify the ways of girls to men. The pervading
characteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, by
strangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the