Beatrice Langford had not the slightest claim to beauty.  She was very little, and so thin that her papa did her no injustice when he called her skin and bones; but her thin brown face, with the aid of a pair of very large deep Italian-looking eyes, was so full of brilliant expression, and showed such changes of feeling from sad to gay, from sublime to ridiculous, that no one could have wished one feature otherwise.  And if instead of being “like the diamond bright,” they had been “dull as lead,” it would have been little matter to Alex.  Beatrice had been, she was still, his friend, his own cousin, more than what he could believe a sister to be if he had one,—­in short his own little Queen Bee.  He had had a monopoly of her; she had trained him in all the civilization which he possessed, and it was with considerable mortification that he thought himself lowered in her eyes by comparison with his old rival, as old a friend of hers, with the same claim to cousinly affection; and instead of understanding only what she had taught him, familiar with the tastes and pursuits on which she set perhaps too great a value.

Fred did not care nearly as much for Beatrice’s preference:  it might be that he took it as a matter of course, or perhaps that having a sister of his own, he did not need her sympathy, but still it was a point on which he was likely to be sensitive, and thus her favour was likely to be secretly quite as much a matter of competition as their school studies and pastimes.

For instance, dinner was over, and Henrietta was admiring some choice books of prints, such luxuries as Uncle Geoffrey now afforded himself, and which his wife and daughter greatly preferred to the more costly style of living which some people thought befitted them.  She called to her brother who was standing by the fire, “Fred, do come and look at this beautiful Albert Durer of Sintram.”

He hesitated, doubting whether Alexander would scorn him for an acquaintance with Albert Durer, but Beatrice added, “Yes, it was an old promise that I would show it to you.  There now, look, admire, or be pronounced insensible.”

“A wonderful old fellow was that Albert,” said Fred, looking, and forgetting his foolish false shame in the pleasure of admiration.  “Yes; O how wondrously the expression on Death’s face changes as it does in the story!  How easy it is to see how Fouque must have built it up!  Have you seen it, mamma?”

His mother came to admire.  Another print was produced, and another, and Fred and Beatrice were eagerly studying the elaborate engravings of the old German, when Alex, annoyed at finding her too much engrossed to have a word for him, came to share their occupation, and took up one of the prints with no practised hand.  “Take care, Alex, take care,” cried Beatrice, in a sort of excruciated tone; “don’t you see what a pinch you are giving it!  Only the initiated ought to handle a print:  there is a pattern for you,” pointing to Fred.