from beneath a
round black sailor's hat that was set far back upon her head. The child's
face was rather pale than very fair, of a beautiful transparent paleness,
with the least tinge of colour in the cheeks; her great violet eyes gazed
wonderingly into the study, and her lips parted in childlike uncertainty,
while her little gloved hand rested on the door-post as though to get a
sense of security from something so solid.

It was only for a moment. Both the young fellows smiled at the child
unconsciously. Perhaps she thought they were laughing at her; she turned
and ran away again; then passed a second time, stealing a long glance at
the two strangers, but followed immediately by the lady, who was probably
her mother, and whose voice had been heard for the last few moments. The
lady, too, glanced in as she went by, and John Short lost his heart then
and there; not that the lady was beautiful as the little girl was, but
because there was something in her face, in her figure, in her whole
carriage, that moved the boy suddenly as she looked at him and sent the
blood rushing to his cheeks and forehead.

She seemed young, but he never thought of her age. In reality she was
nine-and-twenty years old but looked younger. She was pale, far paler
than the little girl, but she had those same violet eyes, large, deep and
sorrowful, beneath dark, smooth eyebrows that arched high and rose a
little in the middle. Her mouth was perhaps large for her face but her
full lips curved gently and seemed able to smile, though she was not
smiling. Her nose was perhaps too small--her face was far from
faultless--and it had the slightest tendency to turn up instead of down,
but it was so delicately modelled that an artist would have pardoned it
that deviation from the classic. Thick brown hair waved across her white
forehead and was hidden under the black bonnet and the veil thrown back
over it. She was dressed in black and the close-fitting gown showed off
with unconscious vanity the lines of a perfectly moulded and perfectly
supple figure. But it was especially her eyes which attracted John's
sudden attention at that first glance, her violet eyes, tender, sad,
almost pathetic, seeming to ask sympathy and marvellously able to command
it.

It was but for a moment that she paused. Then came the vicar, following
her from the drawing-room, and all three went on. Presently Short heard
the front door open and Mr. Ambrose shouted to the fly.

"Mugg