Staveley
shall, to many of my readers, be the most interesting personage
in this story, I must pause to say something of her. I must say
something of her; and as, with all women, the outward and visible
signs of grace and beauty are those which are thought of the most, or
at any rate spoken of the oftenest, I will begin with her exterior
attributes. And that the muses may assist me in my endeavour,
teaching my rough hands to draw with some accuracy the delicate lines
of female beauty, I now make to them my humble but earnest prayer.

Madeline Staveley was at this time about nineteen years of age. That
she was perfect in her beauty I cannot ask the muses to say, but that
she will some day become so, I think the goddesses may be requested
to prophesy. At present she was very slight, and appeared to be
almost too tall for her form. She was indeed above the average height
of women, and from her brother encountered some ridicule on this
head; but not the less were all her movements soft, graceful, and
fawnlike as should be those of a young girl. She was still at this
time a child in heart and spirit, and could have played as a child
had not the instinct of a woman taught to her the expediency of a
staid demeanour. There is nothing among the wonders of womanhood more
wonderful than this, that the young mind and young heart,--hearts and
minds young as youth can make them, and in their natures as gay,--can
assume the gravity and discretion of threescore years and maintain
it successfully before all comers. And this is done, not as a lesson
that has been taught, but as the result of an instinct implanted from
the birth. Let us remember the mirth of our sisters in our homes, and
their altered demeanours when those homes were opened to strangers;
and remember also that this change had come from the inward working
of their own feminine natures!

But I am altogether departing from Madeline Staveley's external
graces. It was a pity almost that she should ever have become grave,
because with her it was her smile that was so lovely. She smiled with
her whole face. There was at such moments a peculiar laughing light
in her gray eyes, which inspired one with an earnest desire to be in
her confidence; she smiled with her soft cheek, the light tints of
which would become a shade more pink from the excitement, as they
softly rippled into dimples; she smiled with her forehead which would
catch the light from her eyes and arch itself in its