ung virgin of all climes. Occasionally in glancing away they would
half close in a thoughtful smile, which, to the uninitiated, unaware of
the irrepressible spirits of their owner, was as unaccountable as it was
provoking.

There was an air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to
the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and
undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read
the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double
advantage, as child and adult, could, according to the occasion, uphold.

Her thick dark hair did not hang down her back in the rich spiral curl
which is now becoming so common among schoolgirls; for that it was too
plentiful, too troublesomely luxuriant. It hung like heavy bronze in a
thick stiff plait--a badge both of her robust youth and the redundant
richness of her blood,--and at its extremity it was tied with a broad
ribbon of black silk. Beneath her hat, bold festoons of hair reached
down almost to her eyebrows, and to these portions of her coiffure she
constantly applied her soft shapely sun-tanned fingers, as if to
reassure herself that they were keeping their proper position.

The roguish expression of her face was partly due to pure health and
partly to wanton spirits, and her features possessed that exceptional
animation which, even in the simple process of eating a fondant,
produced the impression of extreme mobility.

Having long previously examined her fellow-passengers and judged them
uninteresting, she divided her attention between the fleeting landscape
at her side, a box of fruit creams, which she was consuming with grave
perseverance, and the contents of a pocket-portfolio, which she
appeared to be slowly sorting and weeding out. To everything she did,
however, to each one of her movements, she had the air of imparting so
much mysteriousness, so much elaborate secrecy, that she soon found
herself the object of the united attention of all her companions. And
occasionally when her fresh full lips parted in a smile at the things
she read, the old gentleman opposite her had to turn also to the
fleeting landscape as a prophylactic against the infection of her high
spirits.

She gave the impression of that aggressive vitality with which Nature
seems deliberately to equip her more favoured female children at this
age, as if to challenge the other sex to a definite attitude
immediately. A quivering freshnes