d ever seen except my father, that they found
they _did_ love each other; and--and--in short they were going to be
married.

Really it seemed much less wonderful then than it does in thinking of
it afterwards. My father was much handsomer than any young man I ever
saw, with a hawk nose, a clear rosy skin, pure pink and white like a
boy's, curly little rings of white hair, blue eyes clear and bright as
the sky, a tall upright soldierly figure, and a magnificent stately
bearing, courteous and grand to all, but sweetly tender to a very few,
and to her above all. It always had been so ever since he had brought
her home an orphan of six years old from her mother's death-bed at
Nice. And he was youthful, could ride or hunt all day without so much
fatigue as either of his sons, and was as fresh and eager in all his
ways as a lad.

And she, our pretty darling! I don't think Torwood and I in the least
felt the incongruity of her becoming our step-mother, only that papa
was making her more entirely his own.

I am glad we did not mar the sunshine. It did not last long. She came
home thoroughly unwell from their journey to Switzerland, and never got
better. By the time the spring had come round again, she was lying in
the vault at Trevorsham, and we were trying to keep poor little Alured
alive and help my poor father to bear it.

He was stricken to the very heart, and never was the same man again.
His age seemed to come upon him all at once; and whereas at sixty-five
he had been like a man ten years younger, he suddenly became like one
ten years older; and though he never was actually ill, he failed from
month to month.

He could not bear the sight or sound of the poor baby. Poor Adela had
scarcely lived to hear it was a boy, and all she had said about it was,
"Ursula, you'll be his mother." And, oh! I have tried. If love would
do it, I think he could not be more even to dear Adela!

What a frail little life it was! What nights and days we had with him;
doctors saying that skill could not do it, but care might; and nurses
knowing how to be more effective than I could be; yet while I durst not
touch him I could not bear not to see him. And I do think I was the
first person he began to know.

Meantime, there was a great difference in Torwood. He had been very
much of a big boy hitherto. No one but myself could have guessed that
he cared for much besides a lazy kind of enjoyment of all the best and
nicest things