succeeded in reaching my room before the two brothers and their
sister appeared at the top of the stairs. I had thus a full
opportunity of observing them, and being naturally quick to gather
impressions, took in with a glance the one member of the Pollard
family who was likely to have no mystery about her.

I found her pretty; prettier, perhaps, than any woman it had ever
been my lot to meet before, but with a doll's prettiness that
bespoke but little dignity or force of mind. Dressed with faultless
taste and with an attention to detail that at a moment like the
present struck one with a sense of painful incongruity, she
advanced, a breathing image of fashion and perhaps folly; her
rustling robes, and fresh, if troubled face, offering a most
striking contrast to the gloom and reserve of the two sombre figures
that walked at her side.

Knowing as by instinct that nothing but humiliation would follow any
obtrusion of myself upon this petted darling of fortune, I withdrew
as much as possible into the shadow, receiving for my reward a short
look from both the brothers; the one politely deprecating in its
saturnine courtesy, the other full of a bitter demand for what I in
my selfish egotism was fain to consider sympathy. The last look did
not tend to calm my already disturbed thoughts, and, anxious to
efface its impression, I impulsively descended the stairs and
strolled out on the lawn, asking myself what was meant by the
difference in manner which I had discerned in these two brothers
towards their sister. For while the whole bearing of the younger had
expressed interest in this pretty, careless butterfly of a woman
thus brought suddenly face to face with a grave trouble, the elder
had only averted looks to offer, and an arm that seemed to shrink at