atmosphere, so clean its pavement--these things pleased me well.

One child in a household of grown people is usually made very much of,
and in a quiet way I was a good deal taken notice of by Mrs. Bretton,
who had been left a widow, with one son, before I knew her; her
husband, a physician, having died while she was yet a young and
handsome woman.

She was not young, as I remember her, but she was still handsome,
tall, well-made, and though dark for an Englishwoman, yet wearing
always the clearness of health in her brunette cheek, and its vivacity
in a pair of fine, cheerful black eyes. People esteemed it a grievous
pity that she had not conferred her complexion on her son, whose eyes
were blue--though, even in boyhood, very piercing--and the colour of
his long hair such as friends did not venture to specify, except as
the sun shone on it, when they called it golden. He inherited the
lines of his mother's features, however; also her good teeth, her
stature (or the promise of her stature, for he was not yet full-
grown), and, what was better, her health without flaw, and her spirits
of that tone and equality which are better than a fortune to the
possessor.

In the autumn of the year ---- I was staying at Bretton; my godmother
having come in person to claim me of the kinsfolk with whom was at
that time fixed my permanent residence. I believe she then plainly saw
events coming, whose very shadow I scarce guessed; yet of which the
faint suspicion sufficed to impart unsettled sadness, and made me glad
to change scene and society.

Time always flowed smoothly for me at my godmother's side; not with