officer again—he with the order—favours you
with a call, and before you know where you are,
spreads open on your dining-table a neat case
containing examples of the wines of his native
country, which he entreats you to taste, it
would certainly be desirable to register the
features of the Hungarian officer in your
memory in case anything should be missing from
the sideboard after this gallant gentleman has
left the premises.

In all pecuniary transactions, again, in the
course of which we pay our money to collectors
of rents, to taxgatherers, representatives of
charitable institutions, or other persons, coming to
our places of abode without any badge of office
with which to proclaim their genuineness,
other than a bundle of receipt forms, which
might be easily forged—in all such cases it
would, no doubt, be only exercising a sensible
and judicious precaution to take special notice
of the personal appearance of the individuals in
question, in case it should prove afterwards
that such collectors were self-appointed and
self-acting. There are some people, luckily,
with regard to whom no such conscious face-
registering is in the least degree necessary,
their personal appearance being sufficiently
remarkable to record itself mechanically on the
memory. If the great Lablache, for instance,
had been a taxgatherer, or the late Duke of
Wellington a collector of contributions to some
charitable scheme, there would certainly have
been no necessity for any conscious exertion of
the observant faculty in order that the features
of either of them might be remembered. It is
not usual, however, to be brought in contact
with persons of such remarkable appearance
as those just mentioned. The mass of people
whom one meets with are mostly devoid of all
very marked characteristics, and these can only
be remembered by means of a careful,
intentional exercise of memory, used in connexion
with such scraps of individuality as they may
possess. That such acts of face-registering
would become easier by continued repetition,
and that the eye's memory would become more
and more active and truthful through being
more habitually used, can hardly be doubted.

                     SISTER ANNE.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER II. (CONTINUED).

I HAD not visited the village since my father's
death, and the carriage had to drive me past the
old red brick mansion which had been my home.
I looked wistfully at the tall elms and beeches
beneath which William and I had played. The
great gate was open, and in the sunlight I saw
a child sitting by the plashing fountain near
which my father and Miss Graeme had found
me reading. The carriage drove on and the
glimpse vanished, but not the thoughts it had
called up. Of all that dear past, lost as well as
dear, what remained to me now—the boy from
whom I had parted that morning, and to whose
mother I had promised that I would be true.

The sun was setting as I reached Rosebower;
a red light flashed back from the windows
but no one came forth to receive me when I
alighted from the carriage. Mrs. Gibson had
not got my last letter, and she was away on a
visit with her daughter. So said a servant who
did not know me. She added that Mr. William
Gibson had unexpectedly arrived that afternoon,
would I see him! I said yes, and he came forth.
He was now a tall handsome man with a grave
brown face, but alas! he was as nervous as
ever and so shy and awkward that he made me
feel very uncomfortable indeed. I did my best
to put him at his ease, but the girl whose hand
he had taken, as he spoke to her, by the sea
shore, was now a young woman, " very stately,"
as he said to me later, and she evidently inspired
him with a feeling akin to awe. Then he was
so distressed that Rosebower should not be
quite ready for me. Well it was a dreary place,
and I wondered at myself for coming to it,
whilst William Gibson showed me through the
low ruins that looked so grey and chill in the
twilight, and kept stammering apologies and
opening windows and expressing regret at the
neglected state in which I found the cottage.
But he did more than all this. When he
returned to his mother's house and sent me the
servant to attend to my first wants, he also sent
me everything he could think of as likely to
add to my comfort. An arm-chair came up on
his head to my room door and was wheeled in
by the girl; then a small bureau followed, then
a little table which would do for me instead of a
work-table. I know not what else would not
have come if I had not laughingly put an end
to his proceedings by going out to him on the
staircase.

"Now, Mr. Gibson," I said severely, " I am
not going to allow any more of this. You are
stripping Mrs. Gibson's rooms, and what will
she think when she comes back?"

He looked chagrined and replied hesitatingly,
" This is such a wretched place for you,
and—and— the things came out of a lumber-
room no one ever looks at, no one ever uses
them."

"At all events," said I, rather doubting this
statement—they all came from his room— " I
am amply provided for, thanks to you, and I
really want nothing more." I wonder if I
really was so handsome then, as he told me
later, that he found me. There was something
of it in his eyes, as, looking up at me
from the bottom of the staircase, he muttered
that Rosebower was a wretched place for one
like me.

I had my way about the furniture; after that
indistinct protest of which the purport, not the
actual words, reached my ear, William Gibson
vanished, and I remained alone. It was the
autumn time and I felt very chill. The servant
lit me a fire in the grate, and as it burned and
crackled I looked around me and thought:
" This is my home, the home I have chosen, let
me make the best of it." I said the same words