her eye. Her auburn hair, even, at times, lightened and darkened.

She stood, now, leaning her head on the window, waiting. Was she
keeping, like the fire-glow, a still, warm welcome for somebody? It was
a very homely work she had been about, you will think. She had made a
panful of white cream-crackers, and piled them on a gold-rimmed China
plate, (the only one she had,) and brought down from the cupboard a
bottle of her raspberry-cordial. Douglas Palmer and George used to like
those cakes better than anything else she made: she remembered, when
they were starting out to hunt, how Geordy would put his curly head over
the gate and call out, "Sis! are you in a good-humor? Have some of your
famous cakes for supper, that's a good girl!" Douglas Palmer was coming
to-night, and she had baked them, as usual,--stopping to cry now and
then, thinking of George. She could not help it, when she was alone. Her
father never knew it. She had to be cheerful for herself and him too,
when he was there.

Perhaps Douglas would not remember about the crackers, after all?--with
the blood heating and chilling in her face, as she looked out of the
window, and then at the clock,--her nervous fingers shaking, as she
arranged them on the plate. She wished she had some other way of making
him welcome; but what could poor Dode do? She could not talk to him, had
read nothing but the Bible and Jay's "Meditations"; she could not show
glimpses of herself, as most American women can, in natural, dramatic
words. Palmer sang for her,--sometimes, Schubert's ballads, Mendelssohn:
she could not understand the words, of course; she only knew that his
soul seemed to escape through the music, and come to her own. She had a
strange comprehension of music, inherited from the old grandfather who
left her his temper,--that supernatural gift, belonging to but few souls
among those who love harmony, to understand and accept its meaning. She