Catherine Hilliard was of the middle size, but looked taller than she was from the slenderness of her figure. Her hair was of that dubious colour which enemies called red, friends auburn, and gushing admirers golden. In reality it was each tint as the light fell on its simple braids and twists. Her complexion was fair and pale—too waxen, in spite of her bird-herding and gardening, for perfect health. Her nose, mouth, and chin were well and softly moulded. But the results of her temperament and circumstances were visible in her personal appearance. There was a languor which had no vital purpose to conquer it, evident in her air, that threatened to drain away the last remnant of what ought to have been the healthy hope and joyousness of her years. Her mouth had a sensitive, plaintive droop. The expression of her eyes varied continually from hesitating dreaminess to spasmodic enthusiasm, from short-lived enthusiasm to intolerant scorn, from quick scorn to morbid depression. The beauty of Catherine Hilliard’s face, as it struck strangers, dwelt principally in the dark blue of her eyes. Withal, she was by no means strictly beautiful, only endowed with a peculiar charm for those on whom the charm worked at all. She had a fancy for gowns of thin material, in their season, like summer clouds floating round or clinging to her, according to the atmosphere, in the dry heat of noon, or in the slight dankness of the dew point. But she preferred the colour of her gowns to be softly dark like the clouds after sunset, thus instinctively rather than deliberately setting off the fair paleness of her complexion. She kept her cousin Louisa marvelling where Catherine could find so many misty purples, heather browns, and cool slate colours, as well as naval blues, of a wire-woven texture. Catherine wore a gauzy gown of a deep plum-colour at this moment. CHAPTER VII. HOW MRS. HILLIARD AND CATHERINE JUDGED THE LAST SAINT GEORGE OF FRIARTON. AT last Mrs. Hilliard came briskly into the room still wearing her hat. She could not, although she had tried, have walked otherwise than briskly; and if she had been a duchess, her buxom and florid good looks, a little overblown, would still have recalled a dairy-maid. But as Mrs. Hilliard was perfectly aware of the association, and, instead of attempting to smother it by all lawful and unlawful means, faced it courageously and acknowledged it openly, she succeeded in surmounting it; by not pretending to be what she was not, she remained herself in all essentials. She looked what she had always been—a lady in spite of excessive plumpness, a decided inclination to redness, and an exuberant, lasting elasticity and quickness of carriage and step—the reverse of Catherine’s listlessness—which would have been more becoming in early youth, and which had small connection with the sober-mindedness, not to say the stateliness and dignity, of mature years.