It was one afternoon that Eloise sat at the drawing-room window, having recently finished her day's work, and letting herself linger now in a place which she very rarely so much as passed through. She sat erect, just then,--her head thrown far back, and the eyelids cast down along the pale face. Mr. St. George came into the room noiselessly, and laid down his riding-whip and gloves. Then he paused, struck by her appearance, and admired her motionless attitude for several minutes. "One sits for Mnemosyne," he said then. Eloise lifted her eyes, and a ghost of color flitted along her cheek. Here was a fortunate moment; the deity of it unbent and smiled. Her heart beat in her throat between the words of her thought; yet she recalled, for support, all the romances she had read, and their eloquent portraitures of love, and, remembering that just as Rebecca loved Ivanhoe, as Paolo loved Francesca, so Hazel and Vane loved each other, "I must! I must!" she kept saying chokingly to herself. Mr. St. George had taken up a book. How should she dare disturb him? At last a hesitating voice came sliding towards him,-- "Mr. St. George"---- "I beg your pardon,--did you speak?" he asked, closing his book. "Mr. St. George, I want to ask you a favor," replied Eloise. She rose, and unconsciously with such an air that he saw her effort, then came and sat on a lower seat directly before him. "When papa, when my dear father was living," said she, "I had a maid, who was always mine, who grew up with me, being only a little younger, and I became attached to her"---- And before Eloise knew it she was lightly playing with Mr. St. George's riding-whip,--that being one of her warm traits just out of Nature, the appropriation of everything about her. "And you have her no longer? That shall be attended to." "Oh, yes, Sir, she waits on me still; that isn't it. She is only seventeen, she has been an atom wayward,--just, you know, as I might have been"---- Mr. St. George smiled so perceptibly that Eloise added, throwing back her head again,-- "Just as I _am_, Sir! But she has behaved very nicely for several----Why, this is Mrs. Arles's whip! the one her husband gave her. I knew it by the ivory vine-stem twining the ebony; and there are her initials in the lovely gold chasing. I used to want it to play with, when I was a little girl,--and she wouldn't let me have it, of course. Pretty initials!" "Yes," said Mr. St. George, coldly. Eloise put it down. And then she stared at him forgetfully, and, unthinkingly, with great disappointed eyes. Thereat Mr. St. George laughed. "Don't Russian women present the knout to their bridegrooms?" asked Eloise then, mischievously. But before he could have replied, she resumed,-- "Well, Sir, Hazel is very pretty"---- "It is Hazel, then? Would you like her to be made more distinctly yours, Miss Eloise?" "Oh, dear, no, Sir, thank you. That isn't it at all. Hazel is in love." "Indeed!"