individuality from its occupier. Everything in the little room was blue,
and each article a present. Photographs of school friends were suspended
from the wall with ribbons of her name-sake colour. It was in the earlier
days of the art, when a stony stare, pursed lips, and general rigidity
were considered essential to the production of the portrait.

Blue, also, were the pincushion and glass toilet implements on the
dressing-table, and a rocking-chair had its cushion embroidered in
bluebells--a tribute of affection from a late schoolfellow.

The bed was curtainless, and neutral except as to its blue valance, and
the carpet only cocoa-nut matting, which, however, harmonized fairly with
the prevailing cerulean effect.

Bluebell was writing in a book, guarded by a Bramah, some profound
reflections on "First Impressions." She never lost the key nor forgot to
lock this volume--a saving clause of common-sense protecting a farrago of
nonsence.

"Ces beaux jours, quand j'étais si malheureux." Have you ever, reader,
taken up an old journal written in early youth, and thought how those
intensely black and white days have now mingled into unnoticeable grey,
half-thankful that the old ghosts are laid, half-regretful for that
keener susceptibility to joy and sorrow gone by? Then, as "the hand
that has written it lays it aside," there is, perhaps, a pang at the
reflection of how the paths now diverge of those who once walked together
as--

"Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses--or wives;