h books were the first objects that attracted me.
On approaching them, I was surprised to find that the all-influencing
periodical literature of the present day--whose sphere is already almost
without limit; whose readers, even in our time, may be numbered by
millions--was entirely unrepresented on Miss Welwyn's table. Nothing
modern, nothing contemporary, in the world of books, presented itself.
Of all the volumes beneath my hand, not one bore the badge of the
circulating library, or wore the flaring modern livery of gilt cloth.
Every work that I took up had been written at least fifteen or twenty
years since. The prints hanging round the walls (toward which I next
looked) were all engraved from devotional subjects by the old masters;
the music-stand contained no music of later date than the compositions
of Haydn and Mozart. Whatever I examined besides, told me, with the same
consistency, the same strange tale. The owner of these possessions
lived in the by-gone time; lived among old recollections and old
associations--a voluntary recluse from all that was connected with the
passing day. In Miss Welwyn's house, the stir, the tumult, the "idle
business" of the world evidently appealed in vain to sympathies which
grew no longer with the growing hour.

As these thoughts were passing through my mind, the door opened and the
lady herself appeared.

She looked certainly past the prime of life; longer past it, as I
afterward discovered, than she really was. But I never remember, in any
other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the beauty of
early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers. Sorrow had evidently
passed over the fair, calm countenance before me, but had left
resignation there as its only trace. Her expression was still
youthful--youthful in its kindness and its candor especially. It was
only when I looked at her hair, that was now growing gray--at her
wan, thin hands--at the faint lines marked round her mouth--at the sad
serenity of her eyes, that I fairly detected the mark of age; and, more
than that, the token of some great grief, which had been conquered, but
not banished. Even from her voice alone--from the peculiar uncertainty
of its low, calm tones when she spoke--it was easy to conjecture that
she must have passed through sufferings, at some time of her life, which
had tried to the quick the noble nature that they could not subdue.

Mr. Garthwaite and she met each other almost like brother