If Miss Adrian saw the dog and the child together she knew that she might come in. If Gertie was alone she would pass by, just speaking a few words to the child as she went along. Gertie spoke of Miss Adrian to Lion as ‘the beautiful lady,’ and Gertie’s description would hardly have been disputed by any one who knew what real beauty was. Ruth Adrian, at the age of twenty-eight, was as young looking as many a girl of eighteen. If it ever comes into fashion to print actual coloured photographs of an author’s characters in his story, it will save the male writer much vexation of spirit. Ladies can tell you at a glance the colour of everybody’s hair and eyes, the modelling of the chin, the expression of the lips, and the character of the nose. The present writer, if asked suddenly, when away from his domestic circle, the colour of his nearest female relative’s eyes, would have to telegraph home for the information. To such a one the minute personal description of his characters is indeed a task, but he is bound to attempt it. What would the ladies say if he left them in doubt as to the colour of his hero’s eyes? What would the gentlemen say if he failed properly to describe the beautiful features of sweet Ruth Adrian? Picture, then, a tall young lady, with soft grey eyes, fair cheeks, in which the delicate white and pink had never been marred by the pernicious adjuncts of the modern belle’s dressing-table; a small, almost baby mouth, that seemed specially designed to spread a perpetual smile over the face; brown hair, neatly and smoothly arranged over a forehead almost too high for a woman’s; and a nose which a Greek sculptor might have borrowed for his Diana. Here you have what the auctioneers would call a catalogue of the features of Ruth Adrian. Picture her thus and you will behold a marble statue; to see her as she was, a sweet and noble English woman, the beautiful spirit that was hers must animate the lifeless clay. Let truth and love shine out from the soft grey eyes, over the fair cheeks spread the glow of health and the smile of innocence, listen to the gentle words of sympathy with all God’s creatures that fall so softly from the well-shaped lips; let the inner beauty of her noble, loving nature shine through and illuminate the whole, as the soft light of the lamp in my lady’s boudoir glows through the daintily decorated shade that covers it, and brings the hidden beauties into tender relief; think of Rath Adrian, not as a beautiful doll, but as a noble woman, and then you will see her as she was. The one great trouble of her life had chastened her beauty, and left upon her features that gentle look of melancholy which poets love to give their heroines. Ruth had loved and lost. The man who won her girlish heart had been unworthy of her. She believed him to be an honourable English gentleman; she discovered him to be an adventurer and a scamp.