There was a change in the girl,--an undefinable something seemed to have passed over her and toned down the redundant brightness of her beauty.

She was paler,--and there were darker shadows than usual under the splendor of her eyes.

Her very attitude, as she leaned her head against the dark, fantastic carving of the porch, had a touch of listlessness and indifference in it; her sweetly arched lips drooped with a plaintive little line at the corners, and her whole air was indicative of fatigue, mingled with sadness.

She looked up now and then from the printed page, and her gaze wandered over the stretch of the scented, flower-filled garden, to the little silvery glimmer of the Fjord from whence arose, like delicate black streaks against the sky, the slender masts of the _Eulalie_,--and then she would resume her reading with a slight movement of impatience.
The volume she held was Victor Hugo's "Orientales," and though her sensitive imagination delighted in poetry as much as in sunshine, she found it for once hard to rivet her attention as closely as she wished to do, on the exquisite wealth of language, and glow of color, that distinguishes the writings of the Shakespeare of France.

Within the house Britta was singing cheerily at her work, and the sound of her song alone disturbed the silence.