Owing to her illness, Rhoda did not hear of the postponement of Ada’s marriage till some weeks had gone by. Mr. Meres had it announced to him in the letter from Mrs. Clarendon which just preceded Ada’s arrival, but he kept the news to himself, not caring to speak with Rhoda of these topics, and taking it for granted that it would come to be spoken of between the three girls sooner or later. Hilda was the first to elicit the fact. This young lady deserves rather more special description than we have yet had time to devote to her. She was delightful. Sixteen years old, already as tall as her sister, delicate in form, delicate in her manners and movements, in watching her you forgot that she was not exactly pretty. Her face, in fact, would not allow you to consider its features individually; together they made one bright, pure, girlish laugh. She crossed your path like a sunbeam; you stopped to gaze after the slim, winsome figure with its airy gait, to wonder at the grace with which she combined the springing lightness of a child and the decorous motions of womanhood. To see her on her way home from school, wishing, yet afraid, to run; books held up against her side, the quick twinkle of her feet and the fairy waft of her skirts--all so fresh, so dainty, so unconscious of things in the world less clean than herself. She met your gaze with delicious frankness; the gray eyes were alive with fun and friendliness and intelligence, they knew no reason why they should not look straight into yours as long as they chose, which, however, was not the same as rendering to you a mutual privilege. If gazed at too persistently she would move her shoulders with a pretty impatience, and ask you some surprising question likely to prove a test of intellectual readiness. Yet it was hard not to take a very long look; the face was puzzling, fascinating, suggestive; there was cleverness in every line of it. Already she had advanced in her studies beyond the point at which Rhoda ceased. How much she knew! She could render you an ode of Horace, could solve a quadratic equation, could explain to you the air-pump and the laws of chemical combination, could read a page of Ælfric’s “Homilies” as if it were modern English. And all the while the very essence of her charm lay in the fact that she knew nothing at all. She lived in a fantastic world, in which every occurrence was stateable in young lady’s language, every person was at heart well-meaning, even if sometimes mistaken, where every joy was refined, and every grief matter for an elegy. Her innocence was primordial. When she came into the room, there entered with her a breath of higher atmosphere; her touch on your hands cooled and delighted like a mountain stream in summer; her laughter was a tradition from the golden age. She was devoted to music, and would have a fine voice; at present she sang everything. When she came back from school in the evening, she would run