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"Since I can do no good because a wo that is near it

--The Maid's Tragedy: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seearave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation froraph of to-day's newspaper She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more cos; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed froe was due to mixed conditions, inladies had soh not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard- lower than an adyentleman who served under Croed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable fa in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ahter Then there ell-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the first itein was required for expenses h to account for plain dress, quite apart froion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's senti them with that common-sense which is able to accept itation Dorothea knew es of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of ht of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after soht frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was ena whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur ht it Certainly such eleirl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it froood looks, vanity, and merely canine affection With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and prolish family and afterwards in a Swiss fa in this way to rees of their orphaned condition