"Yes," said the Duchess complacently, "leaving me out. Your teeth are not white, but they are regular, and I like your mouth, Sally"--kissing it--"though it is a little bit too large. Your hair isn't as silky as mine----" "Oh, no, Duchess, how could it be?" "But it is longer and stronger; and as for your eyes, you have no idea how they sparkle. They are full of fire." "If a fairy was to come to me to-night," said Sally, delighted at the Duchess's praises, "and give me wishes, I don't think I would have myself changed." "I know what I would wish for." "What?" "Silk dresses and furs and kid gloves and gold watches and chains and bracelets; carriages and footmen and white dogs; flowers and fans and lace pocket-handkerchiefs and----" "Oh, my!" exclaimed Sally. "We shouldn't have room for them all. Goodnight. I'm so sleepy." The Duchess dreamt that all the things she wished for were hers, and that she was a fine lady, driving in her carriage through Rosemary Lane, with all the neighbours cheering and bowing to her. In this way, and with this kind of teaching, the Duchess grew from child to woman. And here for a time we drop the curtain. The silent years, fraught with smiles and tears, roll on; for some the buds are blossoming; for some the leaves are falling; the young look forward to the sunny land they shall never reach; the old look back with sighs upon days made happy by regret. And midst the triumph and the anguish, the hope and fear, the joy and sorrow, Time, with passionless finger, marks the record, and pushes us gently on towards the grave. Part the Second. THE WOMAN. CHAPTER XX. Certain pictures here present themselves in the shape of a medallion. In the centre is the portrait of a beautiful girl-woman, as tall to many a man with an eye for beauty as Rosalind was to Orlando; with limbs perfectly moulded; with white and shapely hands; with flaxen wavy hair and blue eyes tempered by a shade of silver grey; with teeth that are almost transparent in their pearliness, and in whose fair face youth's roses are blooming. This is the Duchess of Rosemary Lane, in the springtime of her life. Around the portrait of this girl-woman are certain others, associated with her by sympathetic links, not all of which are in active play or in harmony with her being. The picture of one in whose cheeks, although she is but little over twenty years of age, no roses are blooming. Her cheeks are sallow, and wanting in flesh, her limbs are thin and ungraceful, her long black hair has not a wave in it, her hands are large and coarse from too much work. But her eyes are beautiful, and have in them the almost pathetic light which is frequently seen in the eyes of a faithful dog. This is Sally, grown to womanhood.