s, or other places on the
coast.

It was while he was thus absent that the three sisters stood one
afternoon on the paved terrace of the _Hotel des Isles d'Or_, which rose
behind them, in light coloured stone, of a kind of Italian-looking
architecture, commanding a lovely prospect, the mountains on the Toulon
side, though near, melting into vivid blue, and white cloud wreaths
hanging on their slopes. In front lay the plain, covered with the
peculiar gray-tinted olive foliage, overtopped by date palms, and sloping
up into rounded hills covered with dark pines, the nearest to the sea
bearing on its crest the Church _de l'Ermitage_. The sea itself was
visible beyond the olives, bordered by a line of _etangs_ or pools, and
white heaps of salt, and broken by a peninsula and the three Isles d'Or.
It was a view of which Bertha seemed never able to have enough, and she
was always to be found gazing at it when the first ready for a walk.

'What are you going to sketch, Phoebe?' she said, as the sisters joined
her. 'How can you, on such a day as this, with the air, as it were,
loaded with cheiranthus smell? It makes one lazy to think of it!'

'It seems to be a duty to preserve some remembrance of this beautiful
place.'

'It may be a pity to miss it, but as for the duty!'

'What, not to give pleasure at home, and profit by opportunities?'

'It is too hard to carry about an embodiment of Miss Fennimore's rules!
Why, have you no individuality, Phoebe?'

'Must I not sketch, then?' said Phoebe, smiling.

'You are very welcome, if you would do it for your pleasure, not as an
act of bondage.'

'Not as bondage,' said Phoebe; 'it is only because I ought that I care to
do so at all.'

'And that's the reason you only make maps of the landscape.'

It was quite true that Phoebe had no accomplished turn, and what had been
taught her she only practised as a duty to the care and cost expended on
it, and these were things where 'all her might' was no equivalent for a
spark of talent. 'Ought' alone gave her the zest that Bertha would still
have found in 'ought not.'

'It is all I can do,' she said, 'and Miss Fennimore may like to see them;
so, Bertha, I shall continue to carry the sketchbook by which the English
woman is known like the man by his "Murray." Miss Charlecote has letters
to write, so we must go out by ourselves.'

The Provencal natives of Hyeres had little liking for the foreigners who
thronged their town, but di