I feel that I am growing old for want of somebody to tell me that I am looking as young as ever. Charming falsehood ! There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words." This was the passage that Millicent Beauregard read from Landor. Her eyes wandered off the volume, and a troubled look stole over their Juno- like irids. Her delicate, white hand was pressed upon the open page, and the faintest contraction, the merest soupgon of a frown shadowed her ample brow. Some chord of sympathy with the writer was touched, and its vibration started a train of unwonted reflections. u Growing old ! " when was that sound musical to the ears of womanhood'? Millicent could not, even by a stretch of courtesy, be called " young," nor in her " full bloom," yet we have some scru- ples about proclaiming the exact date of her birth- day. She had long passed the season when the transient blossoms of an American woman's spring- time wither, and the briefly expanded rose leaves of her summer fall. Yet Millicent possessed so (155)