tha added, in the most womanly voice that she could muster, 'My
sister and Miss Charlecote will be very glad to see you--very much
obliged to you.'

Then Maria, who was unusually demonstrative, put another question--

'Are you ill? Bertha says everybody here is ill. I hope you are not.'

'No, thank you,' was the reply. 'I am here with my uncle and aunt. It
is my uncle who has been unwell.'

Bertha, afraid that Maria might blunder into a history of her malady,
began to talk fast of the landscape and its beauties. The stranger
seemed to understand her desire to lead away from herself, and readily
responded, with a manner that gave sweetness to all she said. She was
not very young-looking, and Maria's notion might be justified that she
was at Hyeres on her own account, for there was hardly a tint of colour
on her cheek; she was exceedingly spare and slender, and there was a
wasted, worn look about the lower part of her face, and something subdued
in her expression, as if some great, lasting sorrow had passed over her.
Her eyes were large, brown, soft, and full of the same tender, pensive
kindness as her voice and smile; and perhaps it was this air of patient
suffering that above all attracted Bertha, in the soreness of her wounded
spirit, just as the affectionateness gained Maria, with the instinct of a
child.

However it might be, Phoebe, who had become uneasy at their absence, and
only did not go to seek them from the conviction that nothing would set
them so completely astray as not finding her at her post, was exceedingly
amazed to be hailed by them from beneath instead of above, and to see
them so amicably accompanied by a stranger. Maria went on in advance to
greet the newly-recovered sister, and tell their adventure; and Bertha,
as she saw Phoebe's pretty, grateful, self-possessed greeting, rejoiced
that their friend should see that one of the three, at least, knew what
to say, and could say it. As they all crept down together through the
rugged streets, Phoebe felt the same strange attraction as her sisters,
accompanied by a puzzling idea that she had seen the young lady before,
or some one very like her. Phoebe was famous for seeing likenesses; and
never forgetting a face she had once seen, her recognitions were rather a
proverb in the family; and she felt her credit almost at stake in making
out the countenance before her; but it was all in vain, and she was
obliged to resign herself to discuss the P