upon the walls, the nursery tea-table.
And over and above all, beyond the bread
and butter, beyond the white mugs, "A
present from Bognor," "A present from
the Isle of Wight," there rose up the
mother. The pure sweet face, the low
black dress, the pretty white neck with its
shining white cross. Like a ministering
angel she lived with them, helping and
calming Belle, petting and hushing her
baby Eunice. At length there came a time
when mamma's pretty neck was always
covered with a shawl, and the fingers that
were so clever in mending all the toys,
grew almost as helpless as those of little
Belle. Then a shade upon the house,
darkening blinds, the passionate
unbelieving grief of the children, and a blank.

They grew up quick, fanciful, morbid.
Quick, in their almost instinctive faculty
for reading other people's thoughts and
guessing at their motives. Fanciful, so
that their caprices were endless, their likes
and dislikes without number, and morbid
to an extent that would have almost broken
their poor mother's heart had she known it.
For instance, the one lamp in the long
ill-lighted street was opposite their house,
and, of course, throughout the long dreary
winters threw a weird sort of radiance on
the puddles, and the children in the nursery
would sob and cry, taking it as an omen of
long, cheerless lives. They were imaginative
children. Between every course there
was played a story, when the silver fork
Gabriel met his love Rosalie the spoon, at
their rendezvous the mug. Every domino
in the box had a name; every ball on the
solitaire board; the hoops were princesses
in disguise.

They were old-fashioned children in old-
fashioned dress. They had curious long
faces, with plaintive dissatisfied eyes, plaited
hair tied at the sides with bows of brown
ribbon, and voices alternately passionate and
pettish.

So time led them from the nursery to the
school-room.

Eunice and Belle had governess after
governess, with whom they fought pitched
battles and did very few lessons. Dreamy,
obstinate, perverse, the children were most
difficult to manage. They were quick at
learning, with magnificent memories, which
retained the smallest things with the clearness
of a photograph; but they chose what
they would learn, and it was very limited
liability. They drew very well, and so
worked hard at their drawing. They
would sit for hours at the piano,
composing, and then singing, their songs. To
a certain extent they were fond of their
books— poetry, fiction, any touch of
romance; no fact, nothing that had ever
really happened, would they learn.

They were dreadful children to argue,
requiring everything proved to them, and,
unlike children, were hard and exacting;
but there was a fascination about them in
spite of it all.

Their loyalty to each other, which, when
one incurred punishment, caused the other
instantly to share it by committing the
same fault; their love of the beautiful,
amounting almost to a worship; their
intolerance of slander; their dislike of gossip;
their invariable siding with the weak; and,
above all, their faithful clinging to their
dead mother's memory; were very noticeable
traits in them.

But they led wretched lives.

Their father did not choose, but accepted
the first governesses that presented
themselves. Gaunt, time-serving, ignorant
women, who first bullied and then toadied
the children; and on both these points the
little judges were merciless.

Eunice and Belle behaved as if they were
devoid of all conscience or feeling. They
delighted in nothing so much as exasperating
their governess until she lost her
temper, and then keeping their own:
studiously every day giving as much trouble
as possible, and overwhelming themselves
with self-reproach at night.

Lessons over, they would spend long
hours in composing anthems, and sketching
plain faces with plenty of character. Their
greatest pleasure was analysing themselves,
and it was very bad for them. They treated
their sense of the ludicrous to a representation
of their own peculiarities, and so greatly
encouraged both, becoming each day more
hopelessly self-concentrated.

So they passed into womanhood, and the
years wrought marvels.

Their appearance was now very good.
Their figures were magnificent, and their
faces, though still peculiar, very handsome;
with complexions of a cream white, capable
of dark flushing, and eyes long and dreamy.
They were immensely admired for their good
looks, quaintness, and the fascination that
had grown with them.

It is here my story begins.

I first made their acquaintance in a large
old country house down in Devonshire,
where we were all staying. They arrived
late one afternoon in dark travelling cloaks,
and veils on their hats, so that I did not
see them till they entered the long low