The eldest, always in motion, waited on her cousin and her father, went to the kitchen, sat again at the table, and when she laughed disclosed two rows of pearl between her rose-colored lips. She was indeed a charming girl, round and dimpled as a child, fresh and gay as a bird, with every gesture graceful, though she was a little espiegle and coquettish. Her coquetry, however, was naive and chaste, of a kind which in many women is but the amiable manifestation of a sentiment of benevolence, and an innocent desire to be agreeable. Ireneus took pleasure in looking at her, and as she immediately acquired self-possession, she conferred the same privilege on others. She already jested with him as if he had been an old friend, and he felt himself as unconstrained as if he had passed his whole life with her. When, however, he looked at Ebba, it was with strange emotion. Nothing in his whole life had ever touched him so. The countenance of the young girl had a cold marble whiteness, making it assume the appearance of a statue, wrought in the most artistic manner. Two long tresses of yellow hair fell over her cheeks, and disclosed a brow of ideal serenity. Her pale face was lit up with eyes clear as crystal, and blue and deep as lakes reflecting the skies. Any one who had once looked into her eyes could not forget them. Often they drooped beneath the lids, like a heart overcome with grief sheltering itself beneath a cloud. When they were lifted up no earthly desire animated them, and in their vague radiation they seemed to look into the infinite. There are plants which the dew and sun do not completely develop. There are beings like weak plants, attached to earth by but feeble roots, and who from their very birth seem predestined to misfortune, and who, by a kind of second-sight, made aware of the fate which awaits them, attach themselves with fear and trembling to a world in which they anticipate only an ephemeral existence and cruel deception. Their sadness is reflected on those who approach them. There is as it were a fatal circle around them, in which all feel themselves seized with indescribable fear, and with the evidences of sympathy entertained for them is mingled a kind of commiseration. Ireneus experienced at the appearance of Ebba this sentiment of uneasiness and melancholy sympathy. When after supper he bade adieu to his uncle and cousins, when he was alone in his room, he smiled when he remembered the amiable gayety of Alete, but became sad and pensive when he recalled the dreamy look of her young sister, the sad melancholy glance which shone over her face like the twilight of an autumn day.