XII. ROSLYN CHAPEL 231

seclusion by devoted parents, at a suburban villa with a pretty garden, to skip, and gather flowers, in. The chief difference was that, from the first, Miss Wardell had had excellent masters, and was now an extremely accomplished, intelligent, and faultless maid of seventeen; fragile and delicate to a degree enhancing her beauty with some solemnity of fear, yet in perfect health, as far as a fast-growing girl could be; a softly moulded slender brunette, with her father’s dark curling hair transfigured into playful grace round the pretty, modest, not unthoughtful, grey-eyed face. Of the afternoon at Hampstead, I remember only that it was a fine day, and that we walked in the garden; mamma, as her mere duty to me in politeness at a first visit, superintending,-it would have been wiser to have left us to get on how we could. I very heartily and reverently admired the pretty creature, and would fain have done, or said, anything I could to please her. Literally to please her, for that is, indeed, my hope with all girls, in spite of what I have above related of my mistaken ways of recommending myself. My primary thought is how to serve them, and make them happy, and if they could use me for a plank bridge over a stream, or set me up for a post to tie a swing to, or anything of the sort not requiring me to talk, I should be always quite happy in such promotion. This sincere devotion to them, with intense delight in whatever beauty or grace they chance to have, and in most cases, perceptive sympathy, heightened by faith in their right feelings, for the most part gives me considerable power with girls: but all this prevents me from ever being in the least at ease with them,-and I have no doubt that during the whole afternoon at Hampstead, I gave little pleasure to my companion. For the rest, though I extremely admired Miss Wardell, she was not my sort of beauty. I like oval faces, crystalline blonde, with straightish, at the utmost wavy, (or, in length, wreathed) hair, and the form elastic, and foot firm. Miss Wardell’s dark and tender grace had no power over me, except to make me extremely afraid of

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