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It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had "lost her looks"

She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer's boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whoht to be painted" Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after a roae by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a wanderer, as herself returning to New York to "settle down"

Poor Medora, repeatedly as always co home to settle down (each ti with her a new husband or an adopted child; but after a few months she invariably parted froot rid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings As her e had linked her to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently on her eccentricities; but when she returned with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in such hands

Every one was disposed to be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed unsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her parents It was one of the uided Medora's ulated A, and when she stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that the crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter than those of her sisters-in-lahile little Ellen was in cri

But New York had so long resigned itself to Medora that only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charh spirits She was a fearless and fa questions, made precocious co a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan love-songs to a guitar Under the direction of her aunt (whose real na received a Papal title, had resumed her first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Marchioness Manson, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni) the little girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included "drawing fro the piano in quintets with professional musicians