It is more than pretty, it is lovely,--the fair, sweet childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes, now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her nose is pure Greek; her forehead, low, but broad, is partly shrouded by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the exquisite azure within. She is not tall, and she is very slender but not lean. She is willful, quick-tempered, and impetuous, but large-hearted and lovable. There is a certain haughtiness about her that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression and laughing kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young ash-tree; her hands and feet are small and well shaped; in a word, she is _chic_ from the crown of her fair head down to her little arched instep. Just now, perhaps, as she hears the honest sound of her aunt's footstep in the hall, a slight pout takes possession of her lips and a flickering frown adorns her brow. Aunt Priscilla is coming, and Aunt Priscilla brings victory in her train, and it is not every one can accept defeat with grace. She hastily pulls up one of the blinds; and as old Miss Chesney opens the door and advances up the room, young Miss Chesney rather turns her shoulder to her and stares moodily out of the window. But Aunt Priscilla is not to be daunted. "Well, Lilian," she says, in a hopeful tone, and with an amount of faith admirable under the circumstances, "I trust you have been thinking it over favorably, and that----" "Thinking what over?" asks Lilian; which interruption is a mean subterfuge. "----And that the night has induced you to see your situation in its proper light." "You speak as though I were the under house-maid," says Lilian with a faint sense of humor. "And yet the word suits me. Surely there never yet was a situation as mine. I wish my horrid cousin had been drowned in----. No, Aunt Priscilla, the night has not reformed me. On the contrary, it has demoralized me, through a dream. I dreamt I went to Chetwoode, and, lo! the very first night I slept beneath its roof the ceiling in my room gave way, and, falling, crushed me to fine powder. After such a ghastly warning do you still advise me to pack up and be off? If you do," says Lilian, solemnly, "my blood be on your head." "Dreams go by contraries," quotes Miss Priscilla, sententiously. "I don't believe in them. Besides, from all I have heard of the Chetwoodes they are far too well regulated a family to have anything amiss with their ceilings."