another sound of the bell, he made a precipitate retreat into his
study. The visitors were the Belmarche family. The old lady was
dark and withered, small, yet in look and air, with a certain
nobility and grandeur that carried Albinia back in a moment to the
days of hoops and trains, of powder and high-heeled shoes, and made
her feel that the sweeping courtesy had come straight from the days
of Marie Antoinette, and that it was an honour and distinction
conferred by a superior--superior, indeed, in all the dignity of age,
suffering, and constancy.

Albinia blushed, and took her hand with respect very unlike the
patronizing airs of Bayford Bridge towards 'poor old Madame
Belmarche,' and with downcast eyes, and pretty embarrassment, heard
the stately compliments of the ancien regime.

Miss Belmarche was not such a fine specimen of Sevres porcelain as
her mother. She was a brown, dried, small woman, having lost, or
never possessed, her country's taste in dress, and with a rusty
bonnet over the tight, frizzly curls of her front, too thin and too
scantily robed to have any waist, and speaking English too well for
the piquant grace of her mother's speech. Poor lady! born an exile,
she had toiled, and struggled for a whole lifetime to support her
mother; but though care had worn her down, there was still vivacity
in her quick little black eyes, and though her teeth were of a
dreadful colour, her laugh was so full of life and sweetness, that
Albinia felt drawn towards her in a moment.

Silent and demure, plainly dressed in an old dark merino, and a
white-ribboned faded bonnet, sat a little figure almost behind her
grandmother. Her face had the French want of complexion, but the