s brighter by the dews of night, perfumed the whole apartment.
Sometimes the rising breeze would scatter a shower of rose-leaves on the
carpet, casting many a one on the heads of the young girls seated at a
table, on either side of Mrs. Hazleton. Helen heeded not the petals that
nestled in the hazel waves of her short, brown hair, but Alice, whose
touch and hearing were made marvelously acute by her blindness, could
have counted every rose-leaf that covered her fair, blonde ringlets.

They were both engaged in the same occupation--knitting purses--and no
one could have told by the quick, graceful motions of the fingers of
Alice, that they moved without one guiding ray from those beautiful blue
eyes, that seemed to follow all their intricacies. Neither could any one
have known, by gazing on those beautiful eyes, that the _soul_ did not
look forth from their azure depths. There was a soft dreaminess floating
over the opaque orbs, like the dissolving mist of a summer's morning,
that appeared but the cloudiness of thought. Alice was uncommonly
lovely. Her complexion had a kind of rosy fairness, indicative of the
pure under-current which, on every sudden emotion, flowed in bright
waves to her cheeks. This was a family peculiarity, and one which Helen
remarked in the young doctor the first time she beheld him. Her profuse
flaxen hair fell shadingly over her brow, and an acute observer might
have detected her blindness by her suffering the fair locks to remain
till a breeze swept them aside. They did not _veil her vision_. Mrs.
Hazleton, with pardonable maternal vanity, loved to dress her beautiful
blind child in a manner decorating to her loveliness. A simple white
frock in summer, ornamented with a plain blue ribbon, constituted her
usual holiday attire. She could select herself the color she best liked,
by passing her hand over the ribbon, and though her garments and Helen's
were of the same size, she could tell them apart, from the slightest
touch.

Helen was less exquisitely fair, less beautiful than Alice, but hers was
an eye of sunbeams and shadows, that gave wonderful expression to her
whole face. Some one has observed that "every face is either a history
or a prophecy." Child as Helen was, hers was _both_. You could read in
those large, pensive, hazel eyes, a history of past sufferings and
trials. You could read, too, in their deep, appealing, loving
expression, a prophecy of all a woman's heart is capable of feeling