and laying her head there, looked
up quietly into his eyes, as if the joy were too much for her.

Morton, unheeded by both, stood by with folded arms. He thought of his
lost and ungrateful brother, and muttered to himself:

"Fool! when she is older, she will forsake him!"

Fanny betrayed in her face the Italian origin of her father. She had
that exceeding richness of complexion which, though not common even
in Italy, is only to be found in the daughters of that land, and which
harmonised well with the purple lustre of her hair, and the full, clear
iris of the dark eyes. Never were parted cherries brighter than her
dewy lips; and the colour of the open neck and the rounded arms was of
a whiteness still more dazzling, from the darkness of the hair and the
carnation of the glowing cheek.

Suddenly Fanny started from Gawtrey's arms, and running up to Morton,
gazed at him wistfully, and said, in French:

"Who are you? Do you come from the moon? I think you do." Then, stopping
abruptly, she broke into a verse of a nursery-song, which she chaunted
with a low, listless tone, as if she were not conscious of the sense. As
she thus sang, Morton, looking at her, felt a strange and painful doubt
seize him. The child's eyes, though soft, were so vacant in their gaze.

"And why do I come from the moon?" said he.

"Because you look sad and cross. I don't like you--I don't like the
moon; it gives me a pain here!" and she put her hand to her temples.
"Have you got anything for Fanny--poor, poor Fanny?" and, dwelling on
the epithet, she shook her head mournfully.

"You are rich, Fanny, with all those toys."

"Am I? Everybody calls me poor Fanny--everybody but papa;" and she ran
again to Gawtrey, and laid her head on his shoulder.

"She calls me papa!" said Gawtrey, kissing her; "you hear it? Bless
her!"

"And you never kiss any one but Fanny--you have no other little girl?"
said the child, earnestly, and with a look less vacant than that which
had saddened Morton.

"No other--no--nothing under heaven, and perhaps above it, but you!" and
he clasped her in his arms. "But," he added, after a pause--"but mind
me, Fanny, you must like this gentleman. He will be always good to you:
and he had a little brother whom he was as fond of as I am of you."

"No, I won't like him--I won't like anybody but you and my sister!"

"Sister!--who is your sister?"

The child's face relapsed into an expression almost of idiotcy. "I don't
know-