The curtains were drawn close, the large lamp was on the table, and a cheerful fire blazing in the grate; for though only September, the room was sufficiently large, and the evenings sufficiently chill, for a fire to add greatly to its aspect of true English comfort. There were many admirable pictures suspended on the walls, and well-filled book-cases, desks, and maps, stands of beautiful flowers, and some ingenious toys, all seeming to proclaim the apartment as the especial possession of the young party who were this evening busily engaged at the large round table which occupied the centre of the room. They were only four in number, but what with a large desk piled with books and some most alarming-sized dictionaries, which occupied the elder of the two lads, the embroidery frame of the elder girl, the dissected map before her sister, and two or three books scattered round the younger boy, the table seemed so well filled that Miss Harcourt had quietly ensconced herself in her own private little corner, sufficiently near to take an interest, and sometimes join in the conversation of her youthful charge; but so apart as to be no restraint upon them, and to enable her to pursue her own occupations of either reading, writing, or working uninterruptedly. Could poor Mrs. Fortescue have glanced on the happy group, she certainly might have told her sister, with some show of justice, that there was such an equal distribution of interesting and animated expression (which is the great beauty of youth), that she could not have known the trial of having such a heavy, dull, unhappy child as Ellen. Mrs. Hamilton, indeed, we rather think, would not have considered such a trial, except as it proved ill-health and physical pain in the little sufferer; and, perhaps her increased care and tenderness (for such with her would have been the consequence of the same cause which had created her sister's neglect) might have removed both the depression of constant but impalpable illness, and the expression of heaviness and gloom. Certain it is, that her own Herbert had, with regard to delicate health, given her more real and constant anxiety than Eleanor had ever allowed herself to experience with Ellen; but there was nothing in the boy's peculiarly interesting countenance to denote the physical suffering he very often endured. Care and love had so surrounded his path with blessings, that he was often heard to declare, that he never even wished to be as strong as his brother, or to share his active pleasures, he had so many others equally delightful. Whether it was his physical temperament, inducing a habitude of reflection and studious thought much beyond his years, or whether the unusually gifted mind worked on the frame, or the one combined to form the other, it would be as impossible to decide with regard to him as with hundreds of others like him; but he certainly seemed, not only to his parents, but to their whole household, and to every one who casually associated with him, to have more in him of heaven than earth; as if indeed he were only lent, not given. And often, and often his mother's heart ached with its very intensity of love, causing the unspoken dread--how might she hope to retain one so faultless, and yet so full of every human sympathy and love! The delicate complexion, beautiful color of his cheeks and lips, and large soft, very dark blue eye, with its long black lash, high, arched brow, shaded by glossy chestnut hair, were all so lit up with the rays of mind, that though his face returned again and again to the fancy of those who had only once beheld it, they could scarcely have recalled a single feature, feeling only the almost angelic expression of the whole.