"...A _sister_!" he was repeating in tones of incredulous astonishment. "A sister! But how extraordinarily unlike! She must have thrown in her own beauty to add to Mrs Hilliard's share!" "Oh, hush!" breathed the girl urgently. "_She heard_!" Stanor Vaughan lifted his head sharply and met Pixie's watching eyes fixed upon him. His own glance was tense and shamed, but to his amazement hers was friendly, humorous, undismayed. There was no displeasure in her face, no hint of humiliation nor discomfiture-- nothing, it would appear, but serene, unruffled agreement. Stanor Vaughan had not a good memory: few events of his youth remained with him after middle life, but when he was an old, old man that moment still remained vivid, when, in the place of rebuke, he first met the radiance of Pixie. O'Shaughnessy's broad, sweet smile. CHAPTER SIX. A TALK ABOUT MEN--AND PICKLES. Stanor Vaughan was deputed to take Pixie in to dinner that evening, an arrangement which at the beginning of the meal appeared less agreeable to him than to his partner. He cast furtive glances at the small, plain, yet mysteriously attractive little girl, who was the sister of the beautiful Mrs Hilliard, the while she ate her soup, and found himself attacked by an unusual nervousness. He didn't know what to say: he didn't know how to say it. He had made a bad start, and he wished with all his heart that he could change places with Carr and "rot" with that jolly Miss Ward. All the same, he found himself curiously attracted by this small Miss O'Shaughnessy, and he puzzled his handsome head to discover why. There was no beauty in the little face, and, as a rule, Stanor, as he himself would have expressed it, had "no use" for a girl who was plain. What really attracted him was the happiness and serenity which shone in Pixie's face, as light shines through the encircling glass, for to human creatures as to plants the great necessity of life is sun, and its attraction is supreme. Walk along a crowded street and watch the different faces of the men and women as they pass by--grey faces, drab faces, white faces, yellow faces, faces sad and cross, and lined and dull, faces by the thousand blank of any expression at all, and then here and there, at rare, rare intervals, a _live_ face that speaks. You spy it afar off--a face with shining eyes, with lips curled ready for laughter, with arching brows, and tilted chin, and every little line and wrinkle speaking of _life_. That face is as a magnet to attract not only eyes, but hearts into the bargain; the passers-by, rouse themselves from their lethargy to smile back in sympathy, and pass on their way wafting mental messages of affection.--"What a _dear_ girl!" they cry, or "woman," or "man," as the case may be. "What a charming face! I should like to know that girl." And the girl with the happy face goes on _her_ way, all the happier for the kindly, thoughts by which she is pursued.