delicate tapering fingers, which she left in my clasp, whilst she went on conversing with the others. Sometimes she took me out for a drive, and I felt very proud at being alone with her in the carriage. “Sit very upright,” she used to say, “and then people will think you are grown-up!” But the greatest delight of all was to be allowed to be present at grandmamma’s toilet, to watch her hair being dressed, and see her arrange her curls, as she always did herself, with her own hands. Her hair was coiled round at the back, and a piece of black lace hung over it, and then in the front the mass of soft little curls shaded her forehead most becomingly, after the fashion of her youth, to which she always clung. Nor did she ever change the style of her dress, during all the years of her widowhood. Her dressing-room seemed to me quite a little sanctuary, so dainty and sweet, with the delicious smell of the rose-water she used to bathe her eyes, and all the beautiful glass-stoppered bottles set out on the toilet-table, and yet there were no toilet arts or mysteries at all, nothing that need be concealed from a child’s gaze. Grandmamma often stayed with us for months together, for my mother and she were intensely fond of one another, and there was even a great likeness between them, which was not surprising, as they were first cousins. She wrote a great deal, had a special facility with her pen, and many a document for the use of her stepson was drawn up by her. French she wrote with perhaps even greater ease, always employing that language for any notes she made for her own reference, for it was of course the language of her youth, being spoken exclusively at the German Courts in the old days. My mother also spoke it before she could speak German, hardly knowing a word of the latter language at the time of her father’s second marriage.