'You have been a little weak,' the phantom said to her, and she acquiesced with a soft sniffle, adding: 'But, dearest, honoured lady, you are a woman, and know what our trials are when we are so persecuted.

O that I had your beautiful sedateness! I do admire it, madam.

I wish I could imitate.' She carried her dramatic ingenuousness farthel still by saying: 'I have seen your photograph'; implying that the inimitable, the much coveted air of composure breathed out of yonder presentment of her features.

'For I can't call you good looking,' she said within herself, for the satisfaction of her sense of candour, of her sense of contrast as well.

And shutting her eyes, she thought of the horrid penitent a harsh-faced woman in confession must be: The picture sent her swimmingly to the confessional, where sat a man with his head in a hood, and he soon heard enough of mixed substance to dash his hood, almost his head, off.