inch a lady." To judge by her features she must once
have been pretty, not a showy prettiness, but decidedly pretty. Now,
as the features were small, all prettiness had faded away in cold gray
colourings, and a sort of tamed and slumbering timidity of aspect. She
was not only not demonstrative, but must have imposed on herself as a
duty the suppression of demonstration. Who could look at the formation
of those lips, and not see that they belonged to the nervous, quick,
demonstrative temperament? And yet, observing her again more closely,
that suppression of the constitutional tendency to candid betrayal of
emotion would the more enlist our curiosity or interest; because, if
physiognomy and phrenology have any truth in them, there was little
strength in her character. In the womanly yieldingness of the
short curved upper lip, the pleading timidity of the regard, the
disproportionate but elegant slenderness of the head between the ear
and the neck, there were the tokens of one who cannot resist the will,
perhaps the whim, of another whom she either loves or trusts.

The book open on her lap is a serious book on the doctrine of grace,
written by a popular clergyman of what is termed "the Low Church." She
seldom read any but serious books, except where such care as she gave
to Lily's education compelled her to read "Outlines of History and
Geography," or the elementary French books used in seminaries for
young ladies. Yet if any one had decoyed Mrs. Cameron into familiar
conversation, he would have discovered that she must early have received
the education given to young ladies of station. She could speak
and write French and Italian as a native. She had read, and still
remembered, such classic authors in either language as are conceded to
the use of pupils by the well-regulated taste of orthodox governesses.
She had a knowledge of botany, such as botany was taught twenty years
ago. I am not sure that, if her memory had been fairly aroused, she
might not have come out strong in divinity and political economy, as
expounded by the popular manuals of Mrs. Marcet. In short, you could see
in her a thoroughbred English lady, who had been taught in a generation
before Lily's, and immeasurably superior in culture to the ordinary run
of English young ladies taught nowadays. So, in what after all are very
minor accomplishments,--now made major accomplishments,--such as music,
it was impossible that a connoisseur should hear her play