"Am I, mamma? Then judge for yourself. I see the gleam of Clara's scarlet cloak through the trees—they are just returning. Send for Miss Holte; ask her some trifling question; and when she is gone tell me if you have ever seen a more beautiful face."
Lady Dartelle complied with her daughter's request and in a few minutes "Miss Holte" and her little pupil entered the room. Lady Dartelle asked Hyacinth some unimportant question, looking earnestly as she did so at the lovely face. She owned to herself that she had had no idea how perfectly beautiful it was; the faintest and most exquisite bloom mantled it, the sweet eyes were bright, the lips like crimson flowers.
"She must have been ill when I engaged her," thought her ladyship—"I will ask her." Smiling most graciously, she said: "You are looking much better, Miss Holte; the air of Hulme seems to agree with you. Had you been ill when I saw you first?"
The beautiful face flushed, and then grew pale. The young ladies looking on were quick to note it. "Yes," she replied, quietly, "I had been very ill for some weeks."
"Indeed! I am glad to see you so fully restored;" and then a gracious bow intimated to "Miss Holte" that the interview was at an end.
"There, mamma," cried Mildred; "you see that we are perfectly right. You must acknowledge that you have never seen any one more lovely."
Lady Dartelle looked slightly bewildered.
"To tell the truth, my dears," she said, "I have hardly noticed the young girl lately. All that I can say is that I did not observe anything so very pretty about her when I engaged her. I thought her very pleasant-looking and graceful, but not beautiful."
"I hope she is what she is represented," remarked Mildred; "but Mary King says that she has all the ways of a grand lady, and that she does not understand what I should have imagined every governess to be familiar with."
"My dear Mildred, you are saying too much. She is highly respectable—a ward or protégée of Mrs. Chalmers—the doctor would never have named her to me if she had not been all that was irreproachable."