Her colour came and went softly, and her eyes brightened with a warm light beneath the dark brows that contrasted so strangely yet delightfully with the mass of flaxen-white hair.

She wore something dark and soft, cut square at the neck, and a plain circlet of gold was her only ornament.

She was a beautiful creature, certainly; one of those striking-looking women of whom something is always expected, until they drop quietly out of youth into middle age, and the world finds out that they are, after all, not heroines of romance, but merely plain, honest, good women; good wives and good mothers who love their homes and husbands well, though it has pleased nature in some strange freak to give them the form and feature of a Semiramis, a Cleopatra, or a Jeanne d'Arc.
"Dear me, how very interesting!" exclaimed Mr.Ghyrkins, looking up from his hill mutton as Isaacs finished, and a little murmur of sympathetic applause went round the table.
"I would give a great deal to have been through all that," said Lord Steepleton, slowly proceeding to sip a glass of claret.
"Just think!" ejaculated John Westonhaugh.

"And I was entertaining such a Sinbad unawares!" and he took another green pepper from the dish his servant handed him.
"Upon my word, Isaacs," I said, "some one ought to make a novel of that story; it would sell like wildfire." "Why don't you do it yourself, Griggs ?" he asked.

"You are a pressman, and I am sure you are welcome to the whole thing." "I will," I answered.
"Oh do, Mr.Griggs," said the young lady, "and make it wind up with a tiger-hunt.