her warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified
observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was
Romance blood in her veins.

But even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest her
attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his
eye from the instrument she broke the silence with--

'What do you see?--something happening somewhere?'

'Yes, quite a catastrophe!' he automatically murmured, without
moving round.

'What?'

'A cyclone in the sun.'

The lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the
scale of terrene life.

'Will it make any difference to us here?' she asked.

The young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the
consciousness that somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned,
and started.

'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'I thought it was my relative come to
look after me! She often comes about this time.'

He continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a