soft and delicately featured, and its rose-white tints were
illumined by grave, deeply-set grey eyes that were full of wistful
and questioning pathos. In stature she was below the middle height
and slight of build, so that she seemed a mere child at first
sight, with nothing particularly attractive about her except,
perhaps, her hands. These were daintily shaped and characteristic
of inbred refinement, and as they hung listlessly at her sides
looked scarcely less white than the white cotton frock she wore.
She turned presently with a movement of impatience away from the
sight of the fussy and quarrelsome fowls, and looking up at the
quaint gables of the farmhouse uttered a low, caressing call. A
white dove flew down to her instantly, followed by another and yet
another. She smiled and extended her arms, and a whole flock of
the birds came fluttering about her in a whirl of wings, perching
on her shoulders and alighting at her feet. One that seemed to
enjoy a position of special favouritism, flew straight against her
breast,--she caught it and held it there. It remained with her
quite contentedly, while she stroked its velvety neck.

"Poor Cupid!" she murmured. "You love me, don't you? Oh yes, ever
so much! Only you can't tell me so! I'm glad! You wouldn't be half
so sweet if you could!"

She kissed the bird's soft head, and still stroking it scattered
all the others around her by a slight gesture, and went, followed
by a snowy cloud of them, through the archway into the garden
beyond. Here there were flower-beds formally cut and arranged in
the old-fashioned Dutch manner, full of sweet-smelling old-
fashioned things, such as stocks and lupins, verbena and
mignonette,--there were box-borders and clumps of saxifrage,