riband, and as we pass the parsonage, Mr. Vasher comes out, fresh, perfectly dressed, with a delicate button-hole in his coat; altogether a pleasant and refreshing sight among this regiment of indifferently clothed young women. He scans our ranks as carelessly as though we were a show of azaleas or roses (not that we are those pretty flowers by any means—far more dandelions than beauty-blossoms grow in our parterre), and does not discover me; apparently my bonnet is as good a disguise as an entirely new body. He has passed us all, with his long, quick step, before we have turned in at the churchyard. I wonder why a black coat on any man's back who is not fifty sends such a twitter of excitement through a girls' school? A few years hence and a hundred men would not cause the excitement that a single one does now in the breast of a school-girl. And now we are in church; anon Mr. Frere is in his place, and "Dearly beloved" is half through, when a prodigious clatter outside makes all eyes turn to the door. A hand with arm coated in grey and scarlet livery opens it, and a tall, fair, majestic woman sails in and rustles up the aisle, her bracelets clanking, her dress trailing behind her, looking uncommonly like a ship in full sail. Miss Fleming follows. She does not rustle and she does not clank; she sweeps noiselessly along in her cool white dress, and she is in white from head to foot. The very church seems the brighter for her coming, as she kneels against the carven oak; she looks as sinless, and fair, and adorable as Marguerite may have looked before Faust came, and yet—and yet—I wonder why with this lovely bit of porcelain I am always thinking of the outside, never of the nature and inner life! For the best of reasons: save for beauty her face is the merest blank; if she has a soul she keeps it mighty well hid, but in the teeth of such perfection who would ask anything more? No sensible man or woman. It is a pity to look at the mother and daughter side by side. Will the lovely red and white of the girl's cheek
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