filled; and if she wore only second-best finery, it was because
she had lent her very best to somebody else. All that her
doting father asked was to pay for her dresses, and to see her
wear them; and if her friends wore a part of them, it only made
necessary a larger wardrobe, and more varied and pleasurable
shopping. She was as good a manager in wealth as in poverty,
wasted nothing, took exquisite care of everything, and saved
faithfully for some one else all that was not needed for her
own pretty person.

Pretty she was throughout, from the parting of her jet-black
hair to the high instep of her slender foot; a glancing,
brilliant, brunette beauty, with the piquant charm of perpetual
spirits, and the equipoise of a perfectly healthy nature. She
was altogether graceful, yet she had not the fresh, free grace
of her cousin

Hope, who was lithe and strong as a hawthorne spray: Kate's
was the narrower grace of culture grown hereditary, an in-door
elegance that was born in her, and of which dancing-school was
but the natural development. You could not picture Hope to your
mind in one position more than in another; she had an endless
variety of easy motion. When you thought of Kate, you
remembered precisely how she sat, how she stood, and how she
walked. That was all, and it was always the same. But is not
that enough? We do not ask of Mary Stuart's portrait that it
should represent her in more than one attitude, and why should
a living beauty need more than two or three?

Kate was betrothed to her cousin Harry, Hope's brother, and,