Now, I was myself not at all acquainted with
my cousin.  All that I knew of her, I knew
from report.

"Too pretty for the place," I commented
inwardly, and then I was very angry with my
myself, and begged Bernard's pardon in my heart,
and could find no words strong enough to
condemn my want of faith, and tried very hard to
like my pretty cousin.  In fact, she was a mere
slip of a girl, very slight and light looking, with
very undeniable eyes, and a very undeniable
mouth.  A little girl, with little delicate ears,
slim feet, and long-fingered hands with pink
palms.

That night I looked long and earnestly at
myself in the glass.  I believe it is not uncommon
for young ladies so to do, and with me
it had grown rather a habit.  I was always
so anxious to see if, haply, I appeared one shade
fairer, and I know that I turned my whole
hair inside out, that so I might get at the
lightest tints.  That night, however, I played no
such freaks.  I simply stood and examined.

I saw in the glass, a well-shaped girl, a brown
face brilliantly coloured, a plump white neck,
round plump arms decorated with dimples, little
fat hands, also all over dimples, but grievously
brown, and with fingers ungracefully short.

Now, looking back on what I saw, I highly
approve of the image in the glass; but Maggie
in those days was not satisfied.

"Brown!" I sighed discontentedly.  "Brown
is no word for it.  Mahogany is nearer the
colour."

Thus I, Maggie, into the small hours; then,
tired at last, I crept into bed, and brought my
brown face into contrast with the sheets.

Next morning on entering the breakfast-room,
I found Florence already down before me, looking
fresh, and sweet, as an English girl should,
at something before eight in the morning.

My father was an artist, and had a true
artist's reverence for beauty.  He looked with
admiration at her elegant little figure, at her
classically shaped head with its glossy wavy hair
simply and prettily confined.  Bernard was not
so artistic.  I glanced at him over my tea-cup,
but his handsome blue eyes were half asleep,
and his face a blank wall for expression.

At length, as I watched him, I saw the man
change; his sleepy blue eyes woke up, and some
intelligence flashed in his face.  Turning to
Florence, and for the first time addressing her,
he said:

"You have just come from London, Miss
Burnand.  Where have you lately been visiting?"

"Kensington,"  said Florence, " Twenty-nine
Anonymous Terrace.  It's very pretty about
there."

"It is so," he replied laconically; and turning
from her, he chatted gaily to me all through
breakfast.

I was filled with a horrible dread.
Twenty-nine Anonymous Terrace!  And Bernard's
mother, I knew well, lived at twenty.  Could
it be possible that Florence was the lady she
had selected for his wife.  She had plenty of
money, and she was aristocratic enough for
any great dame.

Oh dear, how I wished that Bernard and I
might but run down to the station after breakfast,
and see her off politely by the train.  Not
so, however.

I see my father shut himself up in his studio;
I watch Bernard saunter slowly down the
garden, waiting as usual for me to join him; I
wonder how on earth I shall get rid of Miss
Burnand.

I think of papa's little hint—the antimacassars
—but I feel intuitively that, though a
crochet-needle may be very well in my little
short fingers, Miss Burnand' s pretty hands are
not turned to such account.  Then Bernard
whistles, and I flush, and Florence looks around
her—a well-bred girl much amazed.  I feel hot
and indignant.  What ridiculous lovers she
must think us!

I twitch my old hat from a peg, and half
make as though I would put it on.  To put it on
entirely, I have not courage.  Florence catches
the idea conveyed by my hat.

"I am going to write letters," she says;
"don't mind me."

I place pens and ink before her with the
rapidity of an experienced clerk, and dance
out into the sunshine down our gay little
garden up to Bernard.  A long happy morning;
a lovers' long talk.  We go out of the garden,
and into the fields, and sit on a great yellow
haystack.  Bernard goes up first, and I climb
up after.  Bernard talks rubbish, and I talk
rubbish after him.

He tells me where, when we are married, he
means to take me.  We are to touch, it would
seem, at all the loveliest spots of the earth;
we are just to touch, and pass on.  I am very
inexperienced, and I have never been out of
Staffordshire.  Still, I vaguely feel that this
touching and passing on may be expensive.

"That will require money?" I say, modestly
interrogative.

"Beyond a doubt, Madge."

Bernard's face clouds.  I feel sure he is
filial, and thinking of his mother.  Some subtle
association of ideas places Florence before me.

"What do you think of her, Bernard?  You
admire her, of course?"

"Of course I do," he said.  "Who could
help it?"

I was mortally ashamed, but little jealous
thrills ran down my dreadfully plump arms, and
I felt myself striving to slide out of his grasp.

Bernard would not hear of the arrangement
ment.  He took no notice of my discomposure,
only held me all the faster, and talked
as if I, Maggie, were at once the quaintest and
sweetest little lady in the land.  This was so
far pleasant, that I partially recovered; but I
could not quite lay aside a restless fear, a
horrible dread, of—something.

Florence gave me no cause for uneasiness;
and yet I was for ever watching her.  She was
certainly, down in Staffordshire, just as she had