NEVER FORGOTTEN.

PART THE FIRST.
CHAPTER VI. THE SISTERS.

THE house in Raglan-terrace, where the
Manuels lived, though small, was as fresh as a
rose—as perhaps a white rose; and though it
could not display a plaster eagle, or an ice-
pail of the same material as some of its
companions did—it some way seemed to be the
least flaunting of the whole row. There was a
little garden in front and another behind, where
the grass and the walks did not seem to suggest
the idea of tufts of green cotton and dry sand
glued on to a deal board, as the other pleasure-
grounds did.

Their little drawing-rooms were fitted out
with all the gaudy decorations and bits of clean
showy finery usually constructed for houses
made "to let." The ceiling and paper were
about as white as ceiling or paper could be
got for the money, so that it seemed as if
it would be a relief to the eye to look at
them through smoked glasses. The gilding of
the moulding and looking-glasses were of the
strongest and fiercest yellow that could be got
for the money, and the radiating fireplace, having
holiday during the summer, flashed back a
distorted picture of the room, like the glass over its
head, and was also about the best polished steel
that could be got for the money. So with the
knobs of the walnut chairs and the walnut headlands
that projected from under the tablecloths,
and the prominent portions of the rockery in the
middle of the room (which was in reality an
ottoman), all of which shone with splashes of
light, and were only now getting over their
primeval stickiness.

The effect of this air of stark and grim luxury
the Manuel family had unconsciously neutralised
by the dispersion here and there of many tasteful
articles of their own. They broke up the stiff
regimental ranks in which the furniture had
been drawn up, and brought about a graceful
orderly "no-order." In a very short time the
contract magnificence was happily overlaid and
tempered, and the gloss rubbed away to the
dimness of genteeler life.

A large lodger family next door, eight or nine
strong in children (with a father in a white
waistcoat and his hands under coat-tails, seen
with an air of pride upon his door-steps during the
evenings, who had ingeniously turned to account
every corner cupboard, and might reasonably
fancy he had hired a rabbit-warren at so many
guineas a month), looking from their plate-glass
window, began to know and take interest in the
Manuel family: in the mother, whom they saw at
times wandering listlessly in the garden; and in
the two sisters, who went forth and came in from
their walking. The nurses and heads of various
sizes which were always permanently in the
window, as if a procession were expected every
moment, made no account of the small-featured
timid mother; nor did the cold-eyed, rough-
mannered son, who went in and out making the
gate clatter behind him, excite their interest.
They were mere lay figures; but as the two
sisters appeared, infantine cries were raised, and
chubby fingers pointed.

Black was the dress of all the family. With
the mother and son it seemed the stiff conventional
mourning, ugly and appropriate; but with
the sisters it became the flowing drapery of scarf
and lace shawl which fell about them in graceful
folds. The figure of the elder, and her rich
heavy hair, which she set off with a deep scarlet
geranium, wrung toleration, if not admiration,
from a London maid who was put away in a very
high burrow next door; but the chubby fingers
were pointed with more favour at the younger
girl.

She seemed to be a child almost like themselves,
and whatever shadow of sorrow was in
the house must have passed by her. They saw
her tripping out after her sister, always a little
late; and her voice supplied music for her
walk, which was more a dance than a walk.
She was shorter than her sister, and her face was
small and round, and so bright that it seemed to
be set in her airy bonnet, like a bouquet of soft
coloured flowers in its border. She was very
young, and she seemed to have all the delicate
bloom of the flower after which she was named.
She was all softness, and tenderness, and love,
and was made to sit the whole day in the warm
sun of life; rather, those about her felt that she
should be reared carefully in a sort of social hot-
house, as a flower they might visit and watch
carefully. In all the cold greys and browns of that
mansion, she was a bright patch of colour. The