"I can see those two boys playing now," continued she, softly, shutting her eyes, as if the better to call up the vision, "as they used to do five- and-twenty years ago in those old-fashioned French gardens behind our hotel.

Many a time have I watched them from my windows.

It was, perhaps, a better play-place than an English garden would have been, for there were but few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but, instead, terraces and balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps more in the Italian style; and there were jets-d'eau, and little fountains that could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and there.

How Clement delighted in turning the water on to surprise Urian, and how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my dear, rough, sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gipsy boy, and cared little for his appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his black eyes and tangled curls; but Clement, without ever showing that he thought about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant, even though his clothes were sometimes but threadbare.

He used to be dressed in a kind of hunter's green suit, open at the neck and half-way down the chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden curls fell behind just like a girl's, and his hair in front was cut over his straight dark eyebrows in a line almost as straight.