THE GOLDEN CITY.
While Marshal Simon was crossing the little court with so agitated an air, reading the anonymous letter, which he had received by Spoil-sport's unexpected medium, Rose and Blanche were alone together, in the sitting-
room they usually occupied, which had been entered for a moment by Loony during their absence.The poor children seemed destined to a succession of sorrows.At the moment their mourning for their mother drew near its close, the tragical death of their grandfather had again dressed them in funereal weeds.They were seated together upon a couch, in front of their work-table.Grief often produces the effect of years.Hence, in a few months, Rose and Blanche had become quite young women.To the infantine grace of their charming faces, formerly so plump and rosy, but now pale and thin, had succeeded an expression of grave and touching sadness.Their large, mild eyes of limpid azure, which always had a dreamy character, were now never bathed in those joyous tears, with which a burst of frank and hearty laughter used of old to adorn their silky lashes, when the comic coolness of Dagobert, or some funny trick of Spoil-sport, cheered them in the course of their long and weary pilgrimage.
In a word, those delightful faces, which the flowery pencil of Greuze could alone have painted in all their velvet freshness, were now worthy of inspiring the melancholy ideal of the immortal Ary Scheffer, who gave us Mignon aspiring to Paradise, and Margaret dreaming of Faust.Rose, leaning back on the couch, held her head somewhat bowed upon her bosom, over which was crossed a handkerchief of black crape.The light streaming from a window opposite, shone softly on her pure, white forehead, crowned by two thick bands of chestnut hair.Her look was fixed, and the open arch of her eyebrows, now somewhat contracted, announced a mind occupied with painful thoughts.Her thin, white little hands had fallen upon her knees, but still held the embroidery, on which she had been engaged.The profile of Blanche was visible, leaning a little towards her sister, with an expression of tender and anxious solicitude, whilst her needle remained in the canvas, as if she had just ceased to work.