Arabella Crofton was a handsome woman of thirty, looking younger than her age. She was tall, and her figure was fully developed without being actually _embonpoint_. Her hands and feet, although proportioned to her height, were beautifully modelled, and the former unusually white and soft. In feature she resembled Kate, so much so that she had more than once been mistaken for her former pupil’s elder sister; but the _expression_ of the two faces was totally dissimilar. In Kate Crane a fiery passionate nature was kept under control by an equally strong degree of pride, and an amount of self-respect which served her in place of a higher principle; in Arabella Crofton lay concealed even a greater depth of passion, but its sole antagonist was an intellect keen, strong, and acute, though not of the highest order, and a determination of will and fixity of purpose which, while it led her straight towards the object she sought, rendered her somewhat unscrupulous as to the means by which it was to be attained; and as the mind usually writes itself more or less legibly on the countenance, so did the expression differ in Kate and her late governess. Still Miss Crofton’s was a face to attract and rivet attention, a face which exercised a species of fascination over those who beheld it, so peculiar that it is not easy to define it. As you gazed upon it, you felt that you were in the presence of an intelligence of no common order, but of whose nature, hopes, fears, wishes, and designs, you were entirely ignorant--nay, in regard to which you could not decide whether the good or evil principle predominated. In this sense of power with which she impressed others, together with the uncertainty how it might be directed, lay the secret of much of Arabella Crofton’e influence. Alice, not being metaphysical, did not attempt to define the sensations with which her new acquaintance inspired her; had she done so, it might have appeared that she had formed much the same estimate of her manner and appearance as that with which we have furnished the reader. But if Alice did not moralize, she arrived at strong and definite conclusions without that process, for before she had been half an hour in Miss Crofton’s company, she felt morally convinced that she should hate her, and that it would turn out that the _ci-devant_ governess either had done, or was about to do, something which would completely account for and justify this sudden animosity. During dinner, a note arrived from Lord Alfred Courtland, offering Alice and Harry seats in his opera-box, which offer, after a few polite speeches to and from Mr. Crane, in his (in?) capacity as master of the house, was accepted. As they drove to the theatre, the following conversation passed between the husband and wife, the lady of course beginning it.