The Blessington dining-room is, like the other reception-rooms, huge and very nobly proportioned. Did we not know that our seventeenth and eighteenth century ancestors were not giants, we should be prone to imagine that it must have been a race of Anakims that required such great wide spaces to sup, and sip chocolate, and play at ombre in. The furniture is in its dotage; it has, figuratively speaking, like its owners, lost hair and teeth, and all unnecessary etceteras; it is reduced to the bare elements of existence. Three tall windows look out upon a flat lawn, and in the middle of this lawn, exactly opposite Esther's eyes, as she sits at breakfast, is an unique and chaste piece of statuary, entitled "The Rape of the Sabines." The space afforded by the stone pediment is necessarily limited, and consequently Roman and Sabines, gentlemen and lady, are all piled one a-top of another in such inextricable confusion as to demand a good quarter of an hour's close observation to determine which of the muscular writhing legs belong to the Roman ravisher and which to the injured Sabine husband. As the sculptor has given none of his _protégées_ any clothing, the snow has been kind enough to throw a modest white mantle over them all. "Mr. and Mrs. Blessington do not come down to breakfast?" says Esther, interrogatively, as the two girls seat themselves at table. "No; they breakfast in their own rooms." "I suppose," says Esther, with some embarrassment, "that they will send for me if they want me for anything, won't they? Perhaps" (with diffidence)--"perhaps you will kindly tell me the sort of things they will want me to do?" "My uncle will be down presently," answered Miss Blessington, "and he will then expect you to read to him until luncheon." "To read what? The Bible?" inquired Esther, who has a vague idea that the Bible is the only form in which literature should employ the attention of the aged. "The Bible? Oh, dear, no!" (with a little laugh). "The papers: the _Times_, _Saturday_, and _Justice of the Peace_, are his favourites; he takes a great, a _remarkable_ interest, considering his age, in politics." "I like reading aloud," says Esther, resolute to look on the bright side. "Reading aloud to my uncle is very fatiguing," replies Constance, cheeringly: "one has to sustain one's voice at a pitch several octaves higher than the natural one. I attempted reading to him once or twice, but it affected my throat so much that I had to leave off," she ends, with a little lackadaisical cough. "I daresay it won't affect mine," rejoins the other rather drily. There is a pause. Talking is a vice to which Miss Blessington is nowise addicted--more especially objectless talking to a little person of the feminine gender who is not one of _nous autres_.