And so, as the sunny summers slipped away, in this atmosphere of love and beauty, Etoile, the peerless little “Princess of the Isle,” budded from infancy into childhood. She was as lovely as the loveliest vision that ever visited a poet in his most inspired dreams. The inside of a shell was not more pearly white, or flushed with a more delicate rose tint, than her fair, transparent complexion; the yellow silk of the young corn no more golden bright than her shining ringlets; nor the modest violet of a deeper, purer blue than her heavenly eyes. Yet blonde, as she was, her fair face was a “softened image” of a _dark ladye_ whom we have seen before. It was as if a dainty miniature had been copied in water colors from a fine portrait in India ink. The fair and roseate face of Etoile was, in fact, a delicate transcript of the beautiful dark face of her mother, Estelle. The life of this lovely child on the delightful Island passed like a heavenly dream. It was even brighter with enchanting illusions than the usual life of childhood. She was taught to believe that the stately and benignant old gentleman, her grand-uncle, was indeed a king; that she herself was in reality a princess, and that the Sunrise Island was her hereditary kingdom. “Within the Island’s calm retreat she lived a sort of charmed life,” never leaving her beautiful home, never even desiring to leave it. In the pleasant mansion her education was conducted by Monsieur Henri, who instructed her in what are called the solid branches of education, and by Madame, who gave her lessons in music, dancing, and embroidery. Out of the mansion, by Monsieur Henri’s express commands, she was left to herself and to nature. Here she lived at liberty in a paradise, the influence of whose beneficent beauty must forever have saved her graceful wildness from breaking into unseemly rudeness. Here she played and frolicked with the innocent freedom of the squirrel, or the bird—going up into the tops of the beautiful grove trees if their umbrageous branches wooed her presence—and learning to climb as the kitten learns; or in her own retired haunts, bathing in the blue waters of the sea until her limbs grew familiar with the waves, and she learned to breast them, as the young swan learns to swim. Thus her physical organization was in the fairest way of a full and beautiful development.