he soul shines through.'

'What are these little fish swimming about the head? They would seem to
indicate a marine deity.'

'The dolphin; the Syracusan emblem.'

'I wish I had been born in those times!' said Betty. And the wish had a
meaning in the speaker's mind which the hearer could not divine.

'Why do you wish that?' asked Pitt, smiling.

'I suppose the principal reason is, that then I should not have been
born in this. Everything is dreadfully prosy in our age. Oh, not
_here_, at this moment! but this is a fairy tale we are living through.
I know how the plain world will look when I go back to it.'

'At present,' said Pitt, taking the Syracusan coin and restoring it to
its place, 'you are not an enthusiastic numismatist!'

'No; how should I? Coins are not a thing to excite enthusiasm. They are
beautiful, and curious, but not exactly--not exactly stirring.'

'I had a scholar once,' remarked Pitt, as he locked the glass door of
the cabinet, 'whose eyes would have opened very wide at sight of this
collection. Have you heard anything of the Gainsboroughs, mother?'

Betty started, inwardly, and was seized with an unreasoning fear lest
the question might next be put to herself. Quietly, as soon as she
could, she moved away from the coin cabinet, and seemed to be examining
something else; but she was listening all the while.

'Nothing whatever,' Mrs. Dallas had answered.

'They have not come back to England. I have made out so much. I looked
up the family after I came home last fall; their headquarters are at a
nice old place down in Devonshire. I introduced myself and got
acquainted with them. They are pleasant people. But they knew nothing
of the colonel. He has not come home, and he has not written. Thus much
I have found out.'

'It is not certain, however,' grumbled Mr. Dallas. 'I believe he _has_
come home; that is, to England. He was on bad terms with his people,
you know.'

'When are you going to show Miss Frere and me London?' asked Mrs.
Dallas. She was as willing to lead off from the other subject as Betty
herself.

'Show you London, mamma! Show you a bit of it, you mean. It would take
something like a lifetime to show you London. What bit will you begin
with?'

'What first, Betty?' said Mrs. Dallas.

Betty turned and slowly came back to the others.

'Take her to see the lions in the Tower,' suggested Mr. Dallas; 'and
the wax-work.'

'Do you think I have never seen a lion, Mr. Dallas?' sa