contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life, and

slender by grace of some divine proportion.

'You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?' she asked. 'Yet it is

better made than yours.' At that she laughed, and her laughter

trilled in his ear like music; but the next moment her face fell.

'I see,' she cried. 'It is my manner that repels you. I am too

constrained, too cold. I am not,' she added, with a more engaging

air, 'I am not the simple English maiden I appear.'

'Oh!' murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.

'In my own dear land,' she pursued, 'things are differently

ordered. There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous

restrictions; little is permitted her; she learns to be distant,

she learns to appear forbidding. But here, in free England--oh,

glorious liberty!' she cried, and threw up her arms with a gesture

of inimitable grace--'here there are no fetters; here the woman may

dare to be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men--is it

not written on the very shield of your nation, honi soit? Ah, it

is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself. You

must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this

stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I speak the language

well?'

'Perfectly--oh, perfectly!' said Harry, with a fervency of

conviction worthy of a graver subject.

'Ah, then,' she said, 'I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my

father's veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in

your expressive tongue. If I speak already without accent, with my

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