le as possible, being,
perhaps, not quite so thoroughly dry and serviceable as it would have
been in its proper period, and made a faint hissing sound in the silence
as it burned, and diffused its pungent odour through the house. The bow
window was open behind its white curtains, and it was there that the
little party gathered out of reach of the unnecessary heat and the
smoke. There was a low sofa on either side of this recess, and in the
centre the French window opened into the garden, where all the scents
were balmy in the stillness which had fallen upon the night.

Mrs. Dennistoun was tall and slim, a woman with a presence, and sat with
a sort of dignity on her side of the window, with a little table beside
her covered with her little requirements, the properties, so to speak,
without which she was never known to be--a book for moments when there
was nothing else to interest her, a case for work should there arise
any necessity for putting in a stitch in time, a bottle of salts should
she or any one else become suddenly faint, a paper cutter in cases of
emergency, and finally, for mere ornament, two roses, a red and a white,
in one of those tall old-fashioned glasses which are so pretty for
flowers. I do wrong to dismiss the roses with such vulgar qualifications
as white and red--the one was a _Souvenir de Malmaison_, the other a
_General_ ---- something or other. If you spoke to Mrs. Dennistoun
about her flowers she said, "Oh, the Malmaison," or "Oh, the General
So-and-so." Rose was only the family name, but happily, as we all know,
under the other appellation they smelt just as sweet. Mrs. Dennistoun
kept up all this little state because she had been used to do so;
because it was part of a lady's accoutrements, so to speak. She had also
a cushion, which was necessary, if not for comfort, yet for her sense of
being fully equipped, placed behind her back when she sat down. But with
all this she was not a formal or prim person. She was a woman who had
not produced a great deal of effect in life; one of those who are not
accustomed to have their advice taken, or to find that their opinion has
much weight upon others. Perhaps it was because Elinor resembled her
father that this peculiarity which had affected all Mrs. Dennistoun's
married life should have continued into a sphere where she ought to have
been paramount. But she was with her daughter as she had been with her
husband, a person of an ineffective character, ta