If there had been any one to take this lonely girl in hand and organize her education, Heaven only knows what might have been made of her; but there was no friendly finger to point a pathway in the intellectual forest, and Isabel rambled as her inclination led her, now setting up one idol, now superseding him by another; living as much alone as if she had resided in a balloon, for ever suspended in mid air, and never coming down in serious earnest to the common joys and sorrows of the vulgar life about her. George and Sigismund talked of Miss Sleaford when they grew tired of discoursing upon the memories of their schoolboy life in Midlandshire. "You didn't tell me that Mr. Sleaford had a daughter," George said. "Didn't I?' "No. She--Miss Sleaford--is very pretty." "She's gorgeous," answered Sigismund, with enthusiasm; "she's lovely. I do her for all my dark heroines,--the good heroines, not the wicked ones. Have you noticed Isabel's eyes? People call them black; but they're bright orange-colour, if you look at them in the sunshine. There's a story of Balzac's called 'The Girl with the Golden Eyes.' I never knew what golden eyes were till I saw Isabel Sleaford." "You seem very much at home with her?" "Oh, yes; we're like brother and sister. She helps me with my work sometimes; at least she throws out suggestions, and I use them. But she's dreadfully romantic. She reads too many novels." "Too many?" "Yes. Don't suppose that I want to depreciate the value of the article. A novel's a splendid thing after a hard day's work, a sharp practical tussle with the real world, a healthy race on the barren moorland of life, a hearty wrestling match in the universal ring. Sit down then and read 'Ernest Maltravers,' or 'Eugene Aram,' or the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and the sweet romance lulls your tired soul to rest, like the cradle-song that soothes a child. No wise man or woman was ever the worse for reading novels. Novels are only dangerous for those poor foolish girls who read nothing else, and think that their lives are to be paraphrases of their favourite books. That girl yonder wouldn't look at a decent young fellow in a Government office with three hundred a year and the chance of advancement," said Mr. Smith, pointing to Isabel Sleaford with a backward jerk of his thumb. "_She's_ waiting for a melancholy creature, with a murder on his mind."