She probably knew her dark eyes were fine and that their lashes were long; but she would have been surprised and perhaps even a little hurt if she had been told that their most striking feature was that, to every man, modest and shrewd enough to divine all that they could exact, they were terrifying. She knew her teeth were faultless; but she did not even suspect the thrill of pained joy that went through the philosopher's frame when he saw the life-hunger they revealed, and, what was more, the full deep bite and fast hold they would take of Life's entrails. A young girl's canines are self-revelatory in this respect. Let them be big and prominent, as Leonetta's were, and the fastness of her hold on Life, once she has bitten, promises to break all records. The sensitive philosopher has little patience with your fair delicate misses with small mouse-like canines. There are too many of them to begin with, and they are so instinctively ladylike. Perhaps the most amusing thing in this world is to watch the antics of a large-canined virgin _de bonne famille_ who is trying to be a lady,--by "lady" is here meant someone who, among other parlour tricks, can perform the feat of "controlling" her feelings,--who has, that is to say, on the one hand "control" and on the other hand "feelings," and whose feelings are weaker than her control. Leonetta's highly pigmented and sunburnt fingers suddenly ceased their twofold activity with the box of fondants and the pocket-portfolio of secret papers, and held a letter long and steadily before her eyes. Again the old gentleman opposite turned to the landscape of fields on his right, and his loose lips worked ominously. The fixity of those keen eyes with their tell-tale slight inward squint, as she studied the letter, proved too much for him, particularly when she began to smile; and his glance wandered desperately to the country he was traversing, in the cool, pallid British greenness of which he found relief. Evidently the letter was a piece of life, for Leonetta was now in deadly earnest, pinching her beautiful tawny neck thoughtfully here and there with her free hand, as she read, and breathing deeply. Her glance travelled rapidly, too, over certain passages, and would then stop dead, sometimes in order to allow a smile to dawn, sometimes to wander a moment to frown at the country-side. Evidently certain portions of the letter were quite uninteresting, or else she knew them by heart. The letter she read was as follows: "My own dearest Leo,