kept all tolerably ship-shape without her; but
we can well fancy that, when the party finally
came down and marched into Orotova, they
looked far less neglected and uncouth than
they would have done had she not been with
them. On the whole, Mr. Smyth's reminiscences
seem to have been so pleasant that his example is
likely to find imitators. His wife is the first
lady who has ever lived over ten thousand feet
above the sea level. It is not likely that many
will do precisely what she did, for astronomical
stations on Teneriffe are not things of every day;
but we should not be surprised to see it become
the correct thing for professors' wives to
accompany their lords on distant and exciting
expeditions. All we would suggest is, that they
should first pause and reflect, unless they are
proof against sea-sickness. We trust that Mrs.
Smyth is. The bare idea of a sea-sick lady,
with the Titania rolling three hundred and
twenty degrees per miuute, is something too
terrible to contemplate.

BROUGHTON DE BROUGHTON.

SHE might be a little too young for him,
perhaps; but if she was, that was the only fault
between them; and that was a fault which— as
the mother said putting back her flaxen ringlets
with a coquettish air— would mend itself every
day, as her own dear husband used to say.
Gentlemen over thirty did not in general
complain of the over-youthfulness of their wives;
she always found that went— what was that
celebrated expression of the mathematicians, her
poor dear husband was so fond of using?— by
inverse ratio, or something like that. So Laura
Broughton— De Broughton, her mother said she
was by rights: one of the old Lancashire
families, you know, a descendant of the
Ailward de Broughton who came in with the
Conqueror.

"Looks liker for the mother than the darter,"
muttered the pew-opener, with a face like a
winter apple pressed against the carved oak
finial, round the boss of which she was peeping,
making believe to be looking at her prayer-
book, and not at the bride.

And so he did. For the mother was one of
those fair, ringleted, brisk, little women who
are only in middle age at sixty, and who
positively refuse to be old at eighty; trim, well-
dressed, coquettish; with very white teeth and
very blue eyes, a little closed at the corners,
as if the edges had been badly cut and bungled
in the hemming— eyes that were afflicted with
an occasional squint, and more apt to look
at things out of those badly-cut corners than
straight in the face— but as blue as two turquoise
beads and as sharp as a bird's; a lively little
woman, who never got tired, and was never
stupid or sleepy, but always full of resources
and clever shifts, and who could by no means
be put out of countenance nor made to lose
her self-possession; a pleasant mannered little
woman, full of smiles and endearing epithets,
and very cordial pressure of her somewhat
sinewy hand; a wise and crafty little woman,
who wore silken surcoats over her inner coat of
mail, and tinged the tips of her fingers so
skilfully you never saw she had iron claws at the
end of them hooked like a vulture's beak. By
all means a most charming little woman; pretty,
lively, well bred, clever, and of good family:
"Why, my dearest Mary, what on earth can you
desire more?" Gordon had said, warmly expostulating
with his sister's "preposterous pride and
baseless suspicion," when she urged her strong
but feminine dislike to her.

No two people could be more unlike than
the mother and daughter. Laura was one of
those girls who look full of a really formidable
amount of character. She was tall, and what
people call well developed; indeed, her figure
was the figure of a woman of five-and-twenty
rather than of a girl scarcely seventeen. Her hair
was of the darkest shade possible next to black,
just lifted out of absolute blackness by the shy
scattering of brown-gold threads through it, and
the quite full gold of the ends and downy
undergrowth. It was that straight, rich, heavy hair
— that almost over-luxuriant hair which, with
broad black eyebrows, dark brown eyes (the
whites slightly tinged with yellow), a rather
long nose, straight, and running down hill, and
full red lips, gives that Oriental character to an
English face which is so wonderfully beautiful
in early youth. To look at her casually you
would say she was full of strength; a nature
buckled and braced with bone and muscle; but
when you came to examine her closely, if you
knew the signs you went to read, you would see
that what you mistook for solid masonry was
mere painted scaffolding, and that the marble
statue in the niche was nothing but a bit of
highly-coloured wax, which any one with ten
working fingers could mould to their will.
Those straight black brows of hers that looked
so harsh and were so soft and silken, were
indicative of neither will nor decision, nor even of
keen perceptions; those dark eyes with the dash
of red through the brown, and ever a soft suffusion
over them like embryonic tears not
perfected, shone only with timidity and pity—
there was no fire in them for all their size
and radiance; the red lips, a little swollen,
were like twin roses, full and loose and richly
redolent of youth and love, but without the
harder core of the rose; in a word, she was
nothing but a great, soft, beautiful child masquerading
as a woman, full of tenderness and love
and sweet obedience and self-sacrifice, but with
a will and individuality as yet only in the germ.
Her mother was not quite the kind of person to
allow even a strong nature to develop side by
side with herself; what boundless power of
compression, then, had not those curved iron
fingers of hers had in the manipulation of such
a plastic creature as this!

Of Gordon Johnstone a few words will be
enough. A tall, handsome, military-looking
man; exact to the extreme of precision; grave
to almost gloom, but tender as none but the