d and himself, both as boys in
Scotch suits, set stiffly against the table like dolls--with gradual
improvement in art and style, till he came to a page where Adelaide's
fair vignetted head of large size was placed side by side with
another, also vignetted and also large.

"Ah! there you are; and what a capital likeness!" cried Edgar, with
the joyous look and accent of one meeting an old friend, giving that
gauge of interest which we all unconsciously give when we first see
the photograph of a well-known face. He looked at the portrait long
and critically. "Only not so pretty," he added gallantly. "Those
fellows cannot catch the spirit: they give only the outside forms, and
not always these correctly. Here is a striking face," he continued,
pointing to Adelaide's companion-picture--a girl with masses of dark
hair, dark eyes, large, mournful, heavily fringed with long lashes,
and a grave, sad face, that seemed listening rather than looking. "Who
is she? She looks foreign."

Adelaide glanced at the page, as if she did not know it by heart.
"That? Oh! that is only Leam Dundas," she said with the faintest,
finest flavor of scorn in her voice.

"Leam Dundas?" repeated Edgar--"the daughter of that awful woman?"

"Yes, and nearly as odd as the mother," answered Adelaide, still in
the same cold manner and with the same accent of superior scorn.

"At least she used to be, you mean, dear, but she is more like other
people now," said kindly Josephine, more just than politic.

Adelaide looked at her calmly, indifferently. "Yes, I suppose she is
rather less savage than of old," was her reply, "but I do not see much
of her,"

"I do not remember to have ever seen her: she must have been a mere
child when I was here last," said Edgar.

"She is nineteen now, I think," said Mrs. Harrowby.

"Not more?" repeated Adelaide. "I imagined she was one-and-twenty at
the least. She looks so very much older than even this--five or six
and twenty, full; dark people age so quickly."

"She seems to be superbly handsome," Edgar said, still looking at the
portrait.

"For those who like that swarthy kind of beauty. For myself, I do not:
it always reminds me of negroes and Lascars."

Adelaide leaned forward, and made pretence to examine Leam's portrait
with critical independence of judgment. She spoke as if this was the
first time she had seen it, and her words the thought of the moment
resulting.

"There is no negroid taint here," Edgar