While she thus spoke, the extraordinary charm of her manner and the distinct loveliness of her delicate yet notable beauty more than once thrilled her listener. Sophia's old worship, if the term be not too strong, returned in full force. She had sworn by Claire, as the phrase goes, in earlier days. She was prepared to swear by her still. The story of Mr. Twining's death and the disloyal deportment of his wife roused her vehement contempt. By the time that Claire had finished her gloomy recital, the two girls were seated close together. Sophia's large fat hand, in its fashionable glove, was fervidly clasping Claire's. "You did perfectly right!" Sophia at length exclaimed, after the pause had come, and while her visitor sat with drooped head and pale, compressed lips. "Your poor father! To bury him that way! It was frightful! And you told her you'd do anything on earth for her if she only wouldn't! And I know how you loved your father. Don't you recollect telling me about him, one recess, when I gave you half my sardine-sandwich? You said he was a gentleman by birth, and had come of a fine family in England. That's where you get your swell looks from, Claire. Yes, you _are_ a swell, even though you've got on a frock that didn't cost, altogether, as much as one yard of mine.... Why, just look at me! I'm awkward and clumsy, exactly as I was at Mrs. Arcularius's. I'll never be any different. And yet I spend loads and loads of money on my things. I do, really! But gracious goodness! there _you_ sit, with your sweet, pure face, shaped like a heart, and your hair that's got the same bright sparkle through its brown that it used to have, and those long eyelashes over those black-blue kind of eyes, and that cunning little dimple in your chin, and those long, slender, ladylike hands"-- Here Claire stopped her, with a sad smile and a shake of the head. She spread open one hand, holding it up for scrutiny at the same moment. "Don't talk of my hands, Sophia," she said. "They've been doing hard work since you saw them last." Sophia gazed down at the inner portion of her friend's hand, for a moment, and then suddenly exclaimed,-- "Work! Why, they're not hard a bit. Oh, Claire, you've worn gloves all the time you worked. Come, own up, now!" Claire smiled in a furtive way. But she spoke with simple frankness the next instant. "Well, yes, Sophia," she said, "I _have_ worn gloves as often as I could. I wanted to save my hands. Some of the girls at Mrs. Arcularius's used to call them pretty. I wanted them to stay pretty--if I could manage it. I don't mind telling you so. But I thought they must have lost every trace of nice looks by this time." Sophia bent over the hand that she still held, and whose palm was turned upward to the light, so that all its inner details, from wrist to finger-tips, could not possibly escape notice.