'Ah! those southern beauties soon go on. Some one told me that Lord Byron's "Maid of Athens," whose portrait I used to think the loveliest thing in the world, became a great stout woman, but was quite a mother to all the young Englishmen about. I remember I used to try to hold my head and keep my eyelids down like the engraving in an old book that had been my mother's.'

'Oh! I think I have seen it at Beechcroft,' said Gillian, very much amused, for she now perceived whence arose Aunt Ada's peculiar turn of the head and droop of the eyelashes, and how the conscious affectation of childhood had become unconsciously crystallised.

She grew more and more anxious as they found some difficulty in making out Ivinghoe Terrace, and found it at last to be a row of rather dilapidated little houses, apparently built of lath and stucco, and of that peculiar meanness only attained by the modern sub. . . Read More