ed her in to see the arrangement. Bell literally clapped her hands
in delight, the young Virginian girl had shown such exquisite taste and
made the little room look so much like a cross between the sleeping
chamber of a very young princess, a museum, and an art gallery. She had
imagination enough to fancy how the scene would appear, with the room so
ornamented, the light turned low and filtering through the white
porcelain shade of the burner, and that singularly beautiful little head
lying in sleep on the white pillow, the calm, childlike features in
repose, and the blonde hair a little dishevelled and insensibly fading
away into the white upon which it rested.

There were some articles of _vertu_, a very small statue of Washington
among them, lying on the bureau and not yet arranged. Bell Crawford went
up to the bureau and examined them, while Marion was arranging a
different loop to the curtains of her bed, which would enable her to
look out, before she rose, on a handsome little steel engraving of the
white-plumed Henry the Fourth at the battle of Ivry, which she had just
placed in position on the wall. Among the articles on the bureau lay a
locket, in gold with a band of blue enamel crossing it diagonally. It
was unclasped, and almost without a thought whether she was doing right
or wrong, Bell (as woman, and even _man_, will often do in such cases)
took it up in her hand, threw open the case and looked at the face of
the miniature within. This was simply the head from an admirable _carte
de visite_, artistic enough to have been made by Gurney or Fredericks,
and showing that it must have been taken within a very few months,--cut
out in a circle and placed within the glass. The face was that of a man
who might have been thirty years of age, dark complexioned but
_strongly_ handsome, indicating size and sinew in figure, with the
cheek-bones a little high, fiery dark eyes under heavy brows, heavy
black hair worn long and curling, and a very heavy and yet graceful dark
moustache. In the picture he had a broad white collar turned down under
the velvet of his dark coat, giving him a peculiar look which may have
been Southern or South-western and was certainly not of the North and
the "great citie." Bell Crawford had only a moment to notice the
picture, and though she supposed it to be the portrait of some near
relative of the young girl, she could not help thinking how completely
and exactly her opposite it was in every p