atures, pale, but healthy-looking; brilliant, restless, dark
eyes; thick brown hair and moustache; a well-knit, vigorous frame, which
gave no sign as yet of the stoutness to which it inclined in later
years, these were points that made his appearance undeniably striking
and attractive. A physiognomist might, however, have found something to
blame as well as to praise in his features. There was an ominous upright
line between the dark brows, which surely told of a variable temper; the
curl of the laughing lips, and the fall of the heavy moustache only half
concealed a curious over-sensitiveness in the lines of the too mobile
mouth. It was not the face of a great thinker nor of a great saint, but
of a humorous, quick-witted, impatient man, of wide intelligence, and
very irritable nervous organisation.

The air of genial hilarity which he could sometimes wear was doubtless
attractive to a man of Vivian's reserved temperament. Percival's
features beamed with good humour--he laughed with his whole heart when
anything amused him. Vivian used to look at him in wonder sometimes, and
think that Percival was more like a great overgrown boy than a man of
eight-and-twenty. On the other hand, Percival said that Vivian was a
prig.

Kitty, sitting at the tea-table, did not think so. She loved her brother
very much, but she considered Mr. Vivian a hero, a demigod, something a
little lower, perhaps, than the angels, but not very much. Kitty was
only sixteen, which accounts, possibly, for her delusion on this
subject. She was slim, and round, and white, with none of the usual
awkwardness of her age about her. She had a well-set, graceful little
head, and small, piquant features; her complexion had not much colour,
but her pretty lips showed the smallest and pearliest of teeth when she
smiled, and her dark eyes sparkled and danced under the thin, dark curve
of her eyebrows and the shade of her long, curling lashes. Then her hair
would not on any account lie straight, but disposed itself in dainty
tendrils and love-locks over her forehead, which gave her almost a
childish look, and was a serious trouble to Miss Kitty herself, who
preferred her step-mother's abundant flaxen plaits, and did not know the
charm that those soft rings of curling hair lent to her irregular,
little face.

Vivian took a cup of tea from her with an indulgent smile, He liked
Kitty extremely well. He lent her books sometimes, which she did not
always read. I am afr