she got up and looked at herself for a minute or two in the old-fashioned oblong mirror over the mantelpiece--the reflection was not a flattering one; still it could not altogether destroy the charm of the fresh young face, the eyes that could look so bright, though just now "a shadow lay" in them, the rich, soft chestnut brown hair. A little smile crept into the eyes and softened the curves of the mouth as she looked; perhaps her face really was rather nice, she had certainly never thought so much about it before--but her dress? What was wrong with it? It fitted well, its colour was unobtrusive and even pretty of its kind, the whole was perfectly suitable and becoming for a young girl of her age and position; only yesterday it had pleased her very well, but to-day it utterly failed to satisfy her vague, unreasonable aspirations. Poor Eugenia, the world began to look very unpromising and dreary again! She sat down and began to wish, or tried to fancy she wished, she had not gone to the Dalrymples' the night before--had never had even this little peep of the beautiful, bewildering world outside her quiet humdrum middle-class home--the world in which all the women were graceful and charming, all the men high-bred and chivalrous, with irresistible eyes and sweet low voices like--"Captain Chancellor's," she was going on to say to herself, but stopped short suddenly. Something--what she could not have exactly told--perhaps merely the matter-of-fact naming of a name--seemed to startle her a little. Her common sense--in which, after all, she was not deficient, though its suggestions were often overruled by the quickly-succeeding moods of her vehement, impressionable nature--came to the rescue, and told her plainly she was behaving like an extremely silly girl. "Here I am," she said to herself, with considerable self-contempt, "here I am, wasting all this day--worse than wasting it, indeed." And with an effort for which she deserved some credit, she set to work to think how best she could at the same time punish and cure her fit of folly. "I know what I can do," she decided. "I shall give the rest of the time to copying out those two old lectures of papa's. They are very dry ones--at least, to me--and they are full of technicalities; so I must attend to them closely, or I shall make mistakes. It will please him too, for it was only yesterday he asked me to do them, and he won't expect them so soon."