forgot any slight inclination to smile at the precision of
language, where deep sound sense and high feeling were conveyed, with
only the fault of pedantry. While thus agreeably engaged on all sides,
the door opened, and Kate entered, but so noiselessly withal, that
she was in the midst of the party, before they knew of her approach.
Recognising Frederic Travers with a gracious smile, she received Sir
Marmaduke's salutation with a deep courtesy, and then, as if similarity
of years required a less ceremonious introduction, took her seat beside
Miss Travers, with an air of mingled kindness and cordiality she so
well knew how to assume. As in an orchestra, amid the swell of many
instruments, where deep-toned thunders mingle with sounds of softer
influence, some one strain will rise, from time to time, suggestive of
feelings apart from the rest, with higher and nobler sympathies around
it, so did her voice, heard among the others, sound thus sweetly. Her
words came winged with a fine expression, which look and gesture could
alone give them--and in the changing colour of her cheek, her brilliant
brow, her lips, even in silence eloquent, there was a character of
loveliness as much above mere beauty, as life transcends the marble.
The more perfect regularity of Sybella's features--their classic
outline--their chaste correctness in every line and lineament--seemed
cold and inanimate when contrasted with the more expressive loveliness
of Kate O'Donoghue. The fearless character of her mind, too, was blended
with so much of womanly delicacy and refinement--the wish to please,
so associated with a seeming forgetfulness of self, that every act and
every gesture teemed with a charm of interest, for which there is no
word, save "fascination;" even that slightly foreign accent, of which we
have already spoken, served to individualize all she said, and left it
graven on the heart long after the words were spoken.

Frederic Travers watched with eager delight the effect these gifts
were producing upon his sister. He saw the pleasure with which Sybella
listened; he recognised, even already, the symptoms of that conquest by
which mind subdues mind, and was overjoyed as he looked.

To Sir Marmaduke's gracefully-expressed hope, that this visit should
form the prelude to their nearer intimacy, the O'Donoghue, with a touch
of sadness in his voice, replied--that he himself was an invalid,
whose steps never wandered beyond the precincts of his h