of the form were rather thin and spare, but they were softened by
the loose bodice and long full skirt of her dress, and by the folds
of a large, white muslin handkerchief which was crossed over her
breast. The face, sheltered by the plain shady hat was also a
little spoilt from the point of view of beauty by the sharpness of
the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a slight prominence of
the cheek-bones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish gray, were fine,
the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while the
complexion had caught the freshness and purity of Westmoreland air
and Westmoreland streams. About face and figure there was a delicate
austere charm, something which harmonized with the bare stretches
and lonely crags of the fells, something which seemed to make her
a true daughter of the mountains, partaker at once of their gentleness
and their severity. _She_ was in her place here, beside the homely
Westmoreland house, and under the shelter of the fells. When you
first saw the other sisters you wondered what strange chance had
brought them into that remote sparely peopled valley; they were
plainly exiles, and conscious exiles, from the movement and
exhilarations of a fuller social life. But Catherine impressed you
as only a refined variety of the local type; you could have found
many like her, in a sense, among the sweet-faced serious women of
the neighboring farms.

Now, as she and Rose stood together, her hand still resting lightly
on the other's shoulder, a question from Agnes banished the faint
smile on her lips, and left, only the look of inward illumination,
the expression of one who had just passed, as it were, through a
strenuous and heroic moment of life, and was still living in the
exaltation of memory.