The Tinted Venus. F. Anstey

outside?"

      "Will you come and see?" he suggested, and this time she did not disdain his arm, and they strolled out together.

      Following a path they had hitherto left unexplored, they came to a little enclosure surrounded by tall shrubs; in the centre, upon a low pedestal, stood a female statue, upon which a gas lamp, some paces off, cast a flickering gleam athwart the foliage.

      The exceptional grace and beauty of the figure would have been apparent to any lover of art. She stood there, her right arm raised, partly in gracious invitation, partly in queenly command, her left hand extended, palm downwards, as if to be reverentially saluted. The hair was parted in boldly indicated waves over the broad low brow, and confined by a fillet in a large loose knot at the back. She was clad in a long chiton, which lapped in soft zig-zag folds over the girdle and fell to the feet in straight parallel lines, and a chlamys hanging from her shoulders concealed the left arm to the elbow, while it left the right arm free.

      In the uncertain light one could easily fancy soft eyes swimming in those wide blank sockets, and the ripe lips were curved by a dreamy smile, at once tender and disdainful.

      Leander Tweddle and Miss Ada Parkinson, however, stood before the statue in an unmoved, not to say critical, mood.

      "Who's she supposed to be, I wonder?" asked the young lady, rather as if the sculptor were a harmless lunatic whose delusions took a marble shape occasionally. This, by the way, is a question which may frequently be heard in picture galleries, and implies an enlightened tolerance.

      "I don't know," said Leander; "a foreign female, I fancy—that's Russian on the pedestal." He inferred this from a resemblance to the characters on certain packets of cigarettes.

      "But there's some English underneath," said Ada; "I can just make it out. Ap—Apro—Aprodyte. What a funny name!"

      "You haven't prenounced it quite correckly," he said; "out there they sound the ph like a f, and give all the syllables—Afroddity." He felt a kind of intuition that this was nearer the correct rendering.

      "Well," observed Ada, "she's got a silly look, don't you think?"

      Leander was less narrow, and gave it as his opinion that she had been "done from a fine woman."

      Ada remarked that she herself would never consent to be taken in so unbecoming a costume. "One might as well have no figure at all in things hanging down for all the world like a sack," she said.

      Proceeding to details, she was struck by the smallness of the hands; and it must be admitted that, although the statue as a whole was slightly above the average female height, the arms from the elbow downwards, and particularly the hands, were by no means in proportion, and almost justified Miss Parkinson's objection, that "no woman could have hands so small as that."

      "I know some one who has—quite as small," said he softly.

      Ada instantly drew off one of the crimson gloves and held out her hand beside the statue's. It was a well-shaped hand, as she very well knew, but it was decidedly larger than the one with which she compared it. "I said so," she observed; "now are you satisfied, Mr. Tweddle?"

      But he had been thinking of a hand more slender and dainty than hers, and allowed himself to admit as much. "I—I wasn't meaning you at all," he said bluntly.

      She laughed a little jarring laugh. "Oh, Matilda, of course! Nobody is like Matilda now! But come, Mr. Tweddle, you're not going to stand there and tell me that this wonderful Matilda of yours has hands no bigger than those?"

      "She has been endowed with quite remarkable small hands," said he; "you wouldn't believe it without seeing. It so happens," he added suddenly, "that I can give you a very fair ideer of the size they are, for I've got a ring of hers in my pocket at this moment. It came about this way: my aunt (the same that used to let her second floor to James, and that Matilda lodges with at present), my aunt, as soon as she heard of our being engaged, nothing would do but I must give Matilda an old ring with a posy inside it, that was in our family, and we soon found the ring was too large to keep on, and I left it with old Vidler, near my place of business, to be made tighter, and called for it on my way here this very afternoon, and fortunately enough it was ready."

      He took out the ring from its bed of pink cotton wool, and offered it to Miss Parkinson.

      "You see if you can get it on," he said; "try the little finger!"

      She drew back, offended. "I don't want to try it, thank you," she said (she felt as if she might fling it into the bushes if she allowed herself to touch it). "If you must try it on somebody, there's the statue! You'll find no difficulty in getting it on any of her fingers—or thumbs," she added.

      "You shall see," said Leander. "My belief is, it's too small for her, if anything."

      He was a true lover; anxious to vindicate his lady's perfections before all the world, and perhaps to convince himself that his estimate was not exaggerated. The proof was so easy, the statue's left hand hung temptingly within his reach; he accepted the challenge, and slipped the ring up the third finger, that was slightly raised as if to receive it. The hand struck no chill, so moist and mild was the evening, but felt warm and almost soft in his grasp.

      "There," he said triumphantly, "it might have been made for her!"