less seen by the others than ever.

Returning from the drive on the morning of Mrs. McLean's last recorded
remark, Mr. Raleigh, who had remained to give the horses in charge to a
servant, was about to pass, when the _tableau_ within the drawing-room
caught his attention and altered his course. He entered, and flung his
gloves down on a table, and threw himself on the floor beside Marguerite
and the children. She appeared to be revisited by a ray of her old
sunshine, and had unrolled a giant parcel of candied sweets, which their
mother would have sacrificed on the shrine of jalap and senna, the
purchase of a surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant
comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off
the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the
acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a
metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of
another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for
defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another
little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate
snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster of
gum-arabic-drop and brandy-smash.

"Contraband?" said Mr. Raleigh.

"And sweet as stolen fruit," said Marguerite. "Ursule makes the
richest comfits, but not so innumerable as these. Mamma and I owe our
sweet-tooth and honey-lip to bits of her concoction."

"Mrs. Purcell," asked Mr. Raleigh, as that lady entered, "is this little
banquet no seduction to you?"