had rather strengthened the feeling. Since that period she had lost her father, and this keenly-felt loss hardened the girl's softer emotions. She seemed incapable of any thing like warmth of affection; for, the first ebullition of joy over on seeing Minnie, whom she really liked better than any person almost in the world, she sat like a beautiful statue, just warmed enough to life to speak and listen;--the face had become colourless again, the smile cold and proud, and the haughty eyes and haughtier brow, seemed to glance or bend with equal indifference on all around her. She was perfect in her beauty as Minnie--one, was the damask rose for richness, the other, the chaste lily; for when Dora's colour rose, nothing could surpass that ripe sunset glow,--it was magnificent from its eastern brightness and depth; whereas Minnie's never became more than a beautiful blush, flitting and returning like a swallow over a wave. Dora's hair was the very darkest chestnut, yet this it was, a colour seldom seen, nothing resembling black nor brown, but the exact colour of the nut itself, rich and mellow. Her eyes--there was her charm of face, they were so dark and lustrous--_velvet eyes_, with the sun shining on them; extravagant, too, for they expended their glances right and left on all, not from a desire to slay her thousands, but, like the donation of the rich and proud to the beggar, she flung her gold away, not caring who might gather it up; it was flung from an inexhaustible source of wealth--it was the natural love of expenditure, inherent in the generous mind giving of its profusion. No one had ever seen her move quickly, scarcely even as a child; when she rose from her seat, she seemed to rise by some quiet galvanism, majestically, gracefully, but without energy or effort; so it was with all; grace presided over all--cold natural grace. Where her mother used violent force to seem dignified, and often thus destroyed the lady, Dora without a thought, so to seem, was an empress in majesty. Minnie was slight and girlish, her cousin matured in form, though not too much so for her height and bearing, with a waist the hand might almost have circled; one curl on either side of her oval face fell quite to that slender waist in unrestrained perfection, heavy and glossy, veiling, but not concealing the beautiful, but strongly marked eyebrow.