Mademoiselle Clairfait gently brushed a particle of dust from the miniature with her handkerchief, and kissed it.  “I have three angels still left,” she said, looking at her pupils.  “They console me for the fourth, who has gone to heaven.”

She patted the face on the miniature gently with her little, withered, white fingers, as if it had been a living thing. "Sister Rose!" she sighed to herself; then, looking up again at me, said, “I should like it put into my portrait, sir, because I have always worn it since I was a young woman, for ’Sister Rose’s’ sake.”

The sudden change in her manner, from the extreme of flighty gayety to the extreme of quiet sadness, would have looked theatrical in a woman of any other nation.  It seemed, however, perfectly natural and appropriate in her.  I went back to my drawing, rather perplexed.  Who was “Sister Rose”?  Not one of the Lanfray family, apparently.  The composure of the young ladies when the name was mentioned showed plainly enough that the original of the miniature had been no relation of theirs.

I tried to stifle my curiosity on the subject of Sister Rose, by giving myself entirely to my work.  For a full half-hour, Mademoiselle Clairfait sat quietly before me, with her hands crossed on her lap, and her eyes fixed on the bracelet.  This happy alteration enabled me to do something toward completing the outline of her face and figure.  I might even, under fortunate circumstances, have vanquished the preliminary difficulties of my task at one effort; but the fates were against me that day.  While I was still working rapidly and to my satisfaction, a servant knocked at the door to announce luncheon, and mademoiselle lightly roused herself from her serious reflection and her quiet position in a moment.

“Ah me!” she said, turning the miniature round on her wrist till it was out of sight.  “What animals we are, after all!  The spiritual part of us is at the mercy of the stomach.  My heart is absorbed by tender thoughts, yet I am not the less ready for luncheon!  Come, my children and fellow-mortals. Allons cultiver notre jardin!"

With this quotation from “Candide,” plaintively delivered, the old lady led the way out of the room, and was followed by her younger pupils.  The eldest sister remained behind for a moment, and reminded me that the lunch was ready.

“I am afraid you have found the dear old soul rather an unruly sitter,” she said, noticing the look of dissatisfaction with which I was regarding my drawing.  “But she will improve as you go on.  She has done better already for the last half-hour, has she not?”

“Much better,” I answered.  “My admiration of the miniature on the bracelet seemed—­I suppose, by calling up some old associations—­to have a strangely soothing effect on Mademoiselle Clairfait.”

“Ah yes! only remind her of the original of that portrait, and you change her directly, whatever she may have been saying or doing the moment before.  Sometimes she talks of Sister Rose, and of all that she went through in the time of the French Revolution, by the hour together.  It is wonderfully interesting—­at least we all think so.”