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visitors than it looked for angels; but one day an angel arrived
unawares, and Doro saw her.

Too simple-hearted to conceal, excited, longing for sympathy, he poured
out his story to Miss Elisabetha, who sat copying from her music-book a
certain ballad for the Demoiselle Xantez.

"It was over on the north beach, aunt, and I heard the music and
hastened thither. She was sitting on a tiger-skin thrown down on the
white sand; purple velvet flowed around her, and above, from
embroideries like cream, rose her flower-face set on a throat so white,
where gleamed a star of brilliancy; her hair was like gold--yellow
gold--and it hung in curls over her shoulders, a mass of radiance; her
eyes were blue as the deepest sky-color; and oh! so white her skin, I
could scarcely believe her mortal. She was playing on a guitar, with her
little hands so white, so soft, and singing--aunt, it was like what I
have dreamed."

The boy stopped and covered his face with his hands. Miss Elisabetha had
paused, pen in hand. What was this new talk of tiger-skins and golden
hair? No one could sing in Beata save herself alone; the boy was
dreaming!

"Theodore," she said, "fancy is permitted to us under certain
restrictions, but no well-regulated mind will make to itself realities
of fancies. I am sorry to be obliged to say it, but the romances must be
immediately removed from the shelf."

These romances, three in number, selected and sanctioned by the
governess of the Misses Daarg forty years before, still stood in Miss
Elisabetha's mind as exemplars of the wildest flights of fancy.

"But this is not fancy, dear aunt," said Doro eagerly, his brown eyes
velvet with moisture, and his brown cheeks flushed. "I saw it all this
afternoon over on the beach; I could show you the very spot where the
tiger-skin lay, and the print of her foot, which had a little shoe so
odd--like this," and rapidly he drew the outline of a walking-boot in
the extreme of the Paris fashion.

Miss Elisabetha put on her glasses.

"Heels," she said slowly; "I have heard of them."

"There is nothing in all the world like her," pursued the excited boy,
"for her hair is of pure gold, not like the people here; and her eyes
are so sweet, and her forehead so white! I never knew such people
lived--why have you not told me all these years?"

"She is a blonde," replied Miss Elisabetha primly. "I, too, am a blonde,
Theodore."

"But not like this, aunt. My lovely lady is like a r