ams sparkling among the
water-lilies, and can be themselves seen from the dining-room windows.
She has deposited the cushions, and now turns round, so that you may have
a full view of her as she stands waiting the slower advance of the elder
lady. You are at once arrested by her large dark eyes, which, in their
inexpressive unconscious beauty, resemble the eyes of a fawn, and it is
only by an effort of attention that you notice the absence of bloom on
her young cheek, and the southern yellowish tint of her small neck and
face, rising above the little black lace kerchief which prevents the too
immediate comparison of her skin with her white muslin gown. Her large
eyes seem all the more striking because the dark hair is gathered away
from her face, under a little cap set at the top of her head, with a
cherry-coloured bow on one side.

The elder lady, who is advancing towards the cushions, is cast in a very
different mould of womanhood. She is tall, and looks the taller because
her powdered hair is turned backward over a toupee, and surmounted by
lace and ribbons. She is nearly fifty, but her complexion is still fresh
and beautiful, with the beauty of an auburn blond; her proud pouting
lips, and her head thrown a little backward as she walks, give an
expression of hauteur which is not contradicted by the cold grey eye. The
tucked-in kerchief, rising full over the low tight bodice of her blue
dress, sets off the majestic form of her bust, and she treads the lawn as
if she were one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' stately ladies, who had suddenly
stepped from her frame to enjoy the evening cool.

'Put the cushions lower, Caterina, that we may not have so much sun upon
us,' she called out, in a tone of authority, when still at some distance.
Caterina obeyed, and they sat down, making two bright patches of red and
white and blue on the green background of the laurels and the lawn, which
would look none the less pretty in a picture because one of the women's
hearts was rather cold and the other rather sad.

And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if
some English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of
grey-tinted stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden
light across the many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great
beech leaning athwart one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its
dark flattened boughs, the too formal symmetry of the front; the broad