seemed to have thought deeply on a large range of topics, but had a sort of downright practicality and cool independence, with all her femininity of bearing, that rather, puzzled her interlocutor.  It occurred to Mr. King to guess that Miss Selina Morton might be from Boston, which she was not, but it was with a sort of shock of surprise that he learned later that this young girl, moving about in society in the innocent panoply of girlhood, was a young doctor, who had no doubt looked through and through him with her keen eyes, studied him in the light of heredity, constitutional tendencies, habits, and environment, as a possible patient.  It almost made him ill to think of it.  Here were types enough for one morning; but there was still another.

The artist had seated himself on a rock a little distance from the house, and was trying to catch some of the figures as they appeared up the path, and a young girl was looking over his shoulder with an amused face, just as he was getting an elderly man in a long flowing duster, straggling gray hair, hat on the back of his head, large iron-rimmed spectacles, with a baggy umbrella, who stopped breathless at the summit, with a wild glare of astonishment at the view.  This young girl, whom the careless observer might pass without a second glance, was discovered on better acquaintance to express in her face and the lines of her figure some subtle intellectual quality not easily interpreted.  Marion Lamont, let us say at once, was of Southern origin, born in London during the temporary residence of her parents there, and while very young deprived by death of her natural protectors.  She had a small, low voice, fine hair of a light color, which contrasted with dark eyes, waved back from her forehead, delicate, sensitive features—­indeed, her face, especially in conversation with any one, almost always had a wistful, appealing look; in figure short and very slight, lithe and graceful, full of unconscious artistic poses, fearless and sure-footed as a gazelle in climbing about the rocks, leaping from stone to stone, and even making her way up a tree that had convenient branches, if the whim took her, using her hands and arms like a gymnast, and performing whatever feat of. daring or dexterity as if the exquisitely molded form was all instinct with her indomitable will, and obeyed it, and always with an air of refinement and spirited breeding.  A child of nature in seeming, but yet a woman who was not to be fathomed by a chance acquaintance.

The old man with the spectacles was presently overtaken by a stout, elderly woman, who landed in the exhausted condition of a porpoise that has come ashore, and stood regardless of everything but her own weight, while member after member of the party straggled up.  No sooner did this group espy the artist than they moved in his direction.  “There’s a painter.”  “I wonder what he’s painting.”  “Maybe he’ll paint us.”  “Let’s see what he’s doing.”  “I should like to see a man paint.”  And the crowd flowed on, getting in front of the sketcher, and creeping round behind him for a peep over his shoulder.  The artist closed his sketch-book and retreated, and the stout woman, balked of that prey, turned round a moment to the view, exclaimed, “Ain’t that elegant!” and then waddled off to the hotel.