"Broad oak staircase"--"drawing-room"--"large, dull, handsome
apartment"--oh, wonderful!

Then on to the description of the alluring heroine:

. . . the face is more than pretty, it is lovely--the fair, sweet,
childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes,
now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her
nose is pure Greek; her forehead low, but broad, is partly shrouded
by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break
loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward
from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the
exquisite azure within. . . There is a certain haughtiness about her
that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression
and laughing, kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young
ash tree; her hands and feet are small and well-shaped; in a word,
she is chic from the crown of her fair head down to her little
arched instep . . .

Missy sighed; how wonderful it must be to be a creature so endowed
by the gods!

Missy--Melissa--now, at the advanced age of fifteen, had supposed
she knew all the wonders of books. She had learned to read the Book
of Life: its enchantments, so many and so varied in Cherryvale, had
kept her big grey eyes wide with smiles or wonder or, just
occasionally, darkened with the mystery of sorrow. There was the
reiterant magic of greening spring; and the long, leisurely days of
delicious summer; the companionship of a quaint and infinitely
interesting baby brother, and of her own cat--majesty incarnate on