Hilda's attractions were of that order which suited her present occupation. She looked well at a tea-table. She wore white, touched here and there with the palest of blue, and her hands moved ever so deftly among the egg-shell china cups and saucers, with their sprawling dragons of green and red. She was essentially the Dresden china type herself. A dainty figure, a transparent complexion, dark blue eyes, and hair the colour of ripe corn: such were the outward and visible attributes of Hilda Marsh. She looked like an angel, and was frequently taken for one--more especially by men. Her beauty was that of a peach, and, like a peach, she possessed a very hard kernel. Not even Mr. Barton had a more obdurate heart. However, she succeeded in hiding this from all save her own family, and they, being anxious for Hilda to make a good match, were so kind as to remain silent on the subject. Moreover, Hilda--her angelic qualities being reserved wholly for the public, and not at all discernible by the domestic hearth--was, in the eyes of her family, a personage to be got rid of. That seemed clear, since she was a great grief at home. Hers was a case in which the face is most certainly not a correct index to the mind. "Ah!" sighed Mrs. Darrow, soothed somewhat now with a strong cup of tea and a particularly indigestible muffin, "if I wasn't the best-tempered woman in the world how I should complain of my hard lot!" "What is the matter now, Julia?" "Matter! oh, nothing worse than usual. Only that Uncle Barton has engaged a governess for Dicky, and I have had no choice in the matter. Oh, it's nothing." Mrs. Darrow stirred her tea violently. "Of course, I'm a mere cipher in my own house." "Mr. Barton pays for the governess," suggested Hilda. "And why shouldn't he? It's his duty to educate Dicky, and give the poor boy a chance in the world. My life is over, Hilda, and I live only for my boy." This was one of Mrs. Darrow's stock pieces of sentiment, and she produced it with surprisingly dramatic effect on every occasion. It sounded well, and cost nothing, for she never troubled about Dicky, save when he was necessary to a tableau on public days, and her reputation of being a devoted mother was to be enhanced thereby. Although her husband had been dead five years, she still mourned him in black silk, amply trimmed with crape, and was careful to use nothing but the most aggressively black-edged paper. Even her handkerchiefs mourned in a deep border, and her cap of delicate white cambric called loudly on the world to witness what a model widow she was. In addition to these mute evidences of eternal sorrow, Mrs. Darrow gave tongue to her woes vigorously. She really did not know, she said, how she bore it. Indeed, if it were not for her dear child she would wish to die. No woman had ever suffered what she had suffered--and much more to the same effect, all of which was very genteel and laudable, and meant to be correctly indicative of her noble state of mind.