graces, and the result is
there only too evident. But Florence seemed to have studied nothing. The
beholder felt that she must have been as graceful when playing with her
doll in the nursery. And it was the same with her beauty. There was no
peculiarity of chiselled features. Had you taken her face and measured
it by certain rules, you would have found that her mouth was too large
and her nose irregular. Of her teeth she showed but little, and in her
complexion there was none of that pellucid clearness in which men
ordinarily delight. But her eyes were more than ordinarily bright, and
when she laughed there seemed to stream from them some heavenly delight.
When she did laugh it was as though some spring had been opened from
which ran for the time a stream of sweetest intimacy. For the time you
would then fancy that you had been let into the inner life of this girl,
and would be proud of yourself that so much should have been granted
you. You would feel that there was something also in yourself in that
this should have been permitted. Her hair and eyebrows were dark brown,
of the hue most common to men and women, and had in them nothing that
was peculiar; but her hair was soft and smooth and ever well dressed,
and never redolent of peculiar odors. It was simply Florence Mountjoy's
hair, and that made it perfect in the eyes of her male friends
generally.

"She's not such a wonderful beauty, after all," once said of her a
gentleman to whom it may be presumed that she had not taken the trouble
to be peculiarly attractive. "No," said another,--"no. But, by George! I
shouldn't like to have the altering of her." It was thus that men
generally felt in regard to Florence Mountjoy. When they came to reckon
her up they did not see how any change was to be made for the better.

To Florence, as to most other girls, the question of her future life had
been a great trouble. Whom should she marry? and whom should she decline
to marry? To a girl, when it is proposed to her suddenly to change
everything in life, to go altogether away and place herself under the
custody of a new master, to find for herself a new home, new pursuits,
new aspirations, and a strange companion, the change must be so
complete as almost to frighten her by its awfulness. And yet it has to
be always thought of, and generally done.

But this change had been presented to Florence in a manner more than
ordinarily burdensome. Early in life, when naturally she would