Did you ever see a fairy? Verena Fontaine looked like nothing else. A small, fair, graceful girl, with charming manners and pretty words. She had the true golden hair, that is so beautiful but so rare, delicate features, and laughing eyes blue as the summer sky. I think her beauty and her attractions altogether took some of us by surprise; me for one. Bob Letsom looked fit to eat her. The sisters were dressed alike, in white muslin and pink ribbons. How we went in to dinner I don't remember, except that Bob and I brought up the rear together. Sir Dace took Mrs. Letsom, I think, and the colonel Mrs. Todhetley; and that beautiful girl, Verena, fell to Tod. Tod! The two girls were about the most self-possessed girls I ever saw; their manners quite American. Not their accent: that was good. Major Letsom and Sir Dace fraternized wonderfully: they discovered that they had once met in the West Indies. After dinner we had music. The sisters sang a duet, and Mary Ann Letsom a song; and Herbert Tanerton sang, forgetting his throat, Grace playing for him; and they made me sing. The evening soon passed, and we all left together. It was a warmish night, with a kind of damp smell exhaling from the shrubs and hedges. The young ladies muffled some soft white woollen shawls round their faces, and called our climate a treacherous one. The parson and Grace said good-night, and struck off on the near way to Timberdale; the rest of us kept straight on. "Why don't your people always live here?" asked Verena of me, as we walked side by side behind the rest. "By something that was said at dinner I gather that you are not here much." "Mr. Todhetley's principal residence lies at a distance. We only come here occasionally." "Well, I wish you stayed here always. It would be something to have neighbours close to us. Of course you know the dreadful little cottage we are in--Maythorn Bank?" "Quite well. It is very pretty, though it is small." "Small! Accustomed to our large rooms in the western world, it seems to us that we can hardly turn in these. I wish papa had managed better! This country is altogether frightfully dull. My sister tells us that unless things improve she shall take flight back to the States. She _could_ do it," added Verena; "she is twenty-one now, and her own mistress." I laughed. "Is she obliged to be her own mistress because she is twenty-one?" "She is her own," said Verena. "She has come into her share of the money mamma left us and can do as she pleases." "Oh, you were speaking in that sense." "Partly. Having money, she is not tied. She could go back to-morrow if she liked. We are not bound by your English notions." "It would not suit our notions at all. English girls cannot travel about alone."