The lounge is drawn up to the left of the fire-place, and Carolyn Clifton, in deep mourning, reclines upon it. She is very much changed since we saw her last. There is scarcely a trace of her disease left—only a few pits scattered thinly over the lower part of the chin and throat. But she is very, very fragile, and her thin, white face is almost spectral, in contrast with her black dress. Her fair hair has grown out richer, sunnier in hue than before. It is just long enough to turn, in natural, smooth ringlets, that reach to her throat. And she wears it so. And those bright curls soften and shade the pearly whiteness of her cheek. The expression of her countenance has changed also. It wears a subdued, almost patient air of suffering. She is beautiful, although now that the roundness and bloom of her cheek are gone, she does not think so. She is beautiful, as she lies there contemplating, with remorseful tenderness, a miniature that she has drawn from her bosom. In the cushion chair, on the right of the fire-place, sits Catherine Kavanagh. She has also changed within the year. Her form is fuller, rounder, more womanly. Her grave, almost stern features, have softened into gentleness. Her voice is softer and deeper. Its tones indeed are very beautiful, and modulated with every shade of feeling. She wears her hair in the same old style, parted over the forehead, rippling down in dark, bright wavelets around her cheeks, and carried behind, and woven with the back hair into a large plait, and then rolled round and round into a succession of rings—a rich, dark, burnished mass of hair— “Golden where the sunlight played, But where the tendrils sought the shade, Dark, but very beautiful.”