would have bidden her remain and talk
on about her forgotten parents, but Macky with another curtsey retired,
and Mrs. Betts, calm and peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady
in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under
the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot
of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered
her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and
brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her
to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part
in a play. Since Macky's kind greeting her spirits had risen, and her
countenance had cleared marvellously.

Mr. Fairfax was standing opposite the door when she appeared. "Good God!
it is Dolly!" he exclaimed, visibly startled. Dolly was his sister
Dorothy, long since dead. Not only in face and figure, but in a certain
lightness of movement and a buoyant swift way of stepping towards him,
Elizabeth recalled her. Perhaps there was something in the simplicity of
her dress too: there on the wall was a pretty miniature of her
great-aunt in blue and white and golden flowing hair to witness the
resemblance. Mr. Fairfax pointed it out to his granddaughter, and then
they went to dinner.

It was a very formal ceremonial, and rather tedious to the
newly-emancipated school-girl. Jonquil served his master when he was
alone, but this evening he was reinforced by a footman in blue and
silver, by way of honor to the young lady. Elizabeth faced her
grandfather across a round table. A bowl-shaped chandelier holding
twelve wax-lights hung from the groined ceiling above the rose-decked
_epergne_, making a bright oasis in the centre of a room gloomy rather
from the darkness of its fittings than from the insufficiency of
illumination. Under the soft lustre the plate, precious for its antique
beauty, the quaint cut glass, and old blue china enriched with gold were
displayed to perfection. Bessie had a taste, her eye was gratified,
there was repose in all this splendor. But still she felt that odd
sensation of acting in a comedy which would be over as soon as the
lights were out. Suddenly she recollected the bare board in the Rue St.
Jean, the coarse white platters, the hunches of sour bread, the lenten
soup, the flavorless _bouilli_, and sighed--sighed audibly, and when her
grandfather asked her why that mournful sound, she told him. Her cour