“For unhappy Jane Sinclair!—­no I won’t distress you, dear Agnes; let the advertisement go; here, I will kiss you, love, and dry your tears, and then when I am dressed you shall know all.”

She took up her own handkerchief as she spoke, and after having again kissed her sister, wiped her cheeks and dried her eyes with childlike tenderness and affection.  She then, looked sorrowfully upon Agnes, and said—­“Oh, Agnes, Agnes, but my heart is heavy—­heavy!”

Agnes’s tears were again beginning to flow, but Jane once more kissed her, and hastily wiping her eyes, exclaimed in that sweet, low voice with which we address children, “Hush, hush, Agnes, do not cry, I will not make you sorry any more.”

She then went on to dress herself, but uttered not another word until she and Agnes met the family below stairs.

“I am now come, papa and mamma, and William, and my darling Maria—­but, Maria, listen,—­I won’t have a tear, and you, Agnes,—­I am come now to tell you a secret.”

“And, dearest life,” said her mother, “what is it?”

“What made them call me the Fawn of Springvale?”

“For your gentleness, love,” said Mr. Sinclair.

“And for your beauty, darling,” added her mother.

“Papa has it,” she replied quickly; “for my gentleness, for my gentleness.  My beauty, mamma, I am not beautiful.”

While uttering these words, she approached the looking-glass, and surveyed herself with a smile of irony that seemed to disclaim her own assertion.  But it was easy to perceive that the irony was directed to some one not then present, and that it was also associated with the memory of something painful to her in an extreme degree.

Not beautiful!  Never did mortal form gifted with beauty approaching nearer to our conception of the divine or angelic, stand smiling in the consciousness of its own charms before a mirror.

“Now,” she proceeded, “I am going to make everything quite plain.  I never told you this before, but it is time I should now.  Listen—­Charles Osborne bound himself by a curse, that if he met, during his absence, a girl more beautiful than I am—­or than I was then, I should say,—­he would cease to write to me—­he would cease to love me.  Now, here’s my secret,—­he has found a girl more beautiful than I am,—­than I was then, I, mean,—­for he has ceased to write to me—­and of course he has ceased to love me.  So mamma, I am not beautiful, and the Fawn of Springvale—­his own Jane Sinclair is forgotten.”

She sat down and hung her head for some minutes, and the family, thinking that she either wept or was about to weep, did not think it right to address her.  She rose up, however, and said: 

“Agnes is my witness:  Did not you, Agnes, say that I am now much handsomer than when Charles saw me last?”

“I did, darling, and I do.”

“Very well, mamma—­perhaps you will find me beautiful yet.  Now the case is this, and I will be guided by my papa.  Let me see—­Charles may have seen a girl more beautiful than I was then,—­but how does he know whether she is more beautiful than I am now?”