Of Marion Fay's appearance something has already been said; enough, perhaps,--not to impress any clear idea of her figure on the mind's eye of a reader, for that I regard as a feat beyond the power of any writer,--but to enable the reader to form a conception of his own. She was small of stature, it should be said, with limbs exquisitely made. It was not the brilliance of her eyes or the chiselled correctness of her features which had struck Hampstead so forcibly as a certain expression of earnest eloquence which pervaded her whole form. And there was a fleeting brightness of colour which went about her cheeks and forehead, and ran around her mouth, which gave to her when she was speaking a brilliance which was hardly to be expected from the ordinary lines of her countenance. Had you been asked, you would have said that she was a brunette,--till she had been worked to some excitement in talking. Then, I think, you would have hardly ventured to describe her complexion by any single word. Lord Hampstead, had he been asked what he thought about her, as he sat waiting for his friend, would have declared that some divinity of grace had been the peculiar gift which had attracted him. And yet that rapid change of colour had not passed unobserved, as she told him that she was sorry that he did not go to church. Marion Fay's life in Paradise Row would have been very lonely had she not become acquainted with Mrs. Roden before her mother's death. Now hardly a day passed but what she spent an hour with that lady. They were, indeed, fast friends,--so much so that Mrs. Vincent had also come to know Marion, and approving of the girl's religious tendencies had invited her to spend two or three days at Wimbledon. This was impossible, because Marion would never leave her father;--but she had once or twice gone over with Mrs. Roden, when she made her weekly call, and had certainly ingratiated herself with the austere lady. Other society she had none, nor did she seem to desire it. Clara Demijohn, seeing the intimacy which had been struck up between Marion and Mrs. Roden,--as to which she had her own little jealousies to endure,--was quite sure that Marion was setting her cap at the Post Office clerk, and had declared in confidence to Mrs. Duffer that the girl was doing it in the most brazen-faced manner. Clara had herself on more than one occasion contrived to throw herself in the clerk's way on his return homewards on dusky evenings,--perhaps intent only on knowing what might be the young man's intentions as to Marion Fay. The young man had been courteous to her, but she had declared to Mrs. Duffer that he was one of those stiff young men who don't care for ladies' society. "These are they," said Mrs. Duffer, "who marry the readiest and make the best husbands." "Oh;--she'll go on sticking to him till she don't leave a stone unturned," said Clara,--thereby implying that, as far as she was concerned, she did not think it