“Oh, miss! you’ll catch your death,” cried Parsons, not indeed knowing why, but delivering the first missile of offence that came to her hand. But Parsons was far from being a person of spirit, or able to cope with her young mistress. She stood helplessly by, protesting, but making no effort to resist, except the passive one of giving no assistance. Kate flew at her dress with a sense of novelty which gave it an additional charm. She buttoned herself into it with a certain delight. “Oh, how nice it is to feel one has something on!” she cried, tossing her wrapper to the other side of the room; and she fastened her belt, and tied her ribbons, and did everything for herself with a sweep of enthusiasm. The reader has only seen her as an invalid, and Kate was very well worth looking at. She was a little over the middle height; her figure was very slender and pliant and graceful--upright, yet bending as if with every breeze. Her hair was warm sunny brown hair; her eyes were dark-violet blue, large, and limpid, and full of a startled sweetness, like the eyes of a fawn. They had the child’s look of surprise at the fair world and wonderful beings among which it finds itself, which has always so great a charm; and with that blue ribbon in her pretty hair, and the clear blue muslin dress, she was like a flower. And then she had that glory of complexion which we are so fond of claiming as specially English. Nothing could be more delicate or more lovely than the gradations of colour in her face--her lips a rich rose, her cheeks a little paler--a soft rose-reflection upon her delicate features and white throat. It was not “the perfect woman nobly planned” which came to your mind at sight of so pretty a creature. She was a Greuze--an article of luxury, worth quantities of money, and always delightful to look at--an ornament to any chamber, the stateliest or the simplest. She might have been placed in a palace or in a cottage, and would not have looked out of place in either; and there was enough beauty in her to decorate the place at once, and make up for all lack of colour or loveliness besides. But what she might have beyond the qualities of the Greuze the spectator could not tell. What harm or good she might have it in her to do--what might be the result even of this first unexpected appearance of hers in the house which she had taken by storm--it was impossible to predict. It could not but be either for good or evil; but, looking into the lovely, flower-like face, into her surprised sweet eyes, the most keen observer would have been baffled. She was full of childish delight in the novelty--a half-mischievous, half-innocent pleasure in the anticipation of producing some effect in the quiet unsuspicious house; but that was all that could be made out. She stood before the glass for a minute contemplating her perfected toilette with the highest satisfaction. She looked like a wreath of that lovely evanescent convolvulus, which