on be installed in them, and to her the least reminder
of the beautiful Bettina who had once so strangely come to it would
naturally be offensive.

With this thought in her mind, she eagerly helped Nora to collect
and pack away every trace of her ever having lived here. One record
of the fact it was out of her power to remove, and this was the
full-length portrait of her, in all the state and magnificence of her
proud position, which hung in the picture-gallery, and which Horace
had never seen. Neither had he ever seen her in such a guise, and, in
spite of her, there was a certain exultation in her breast when she
imagined the moment of his first beholding it. Another moment,
equally charged with mingled pride and pain, was the anticipation of
the time when the next bearer of the name and title should come to
have her portrait hung there. No Lady Hurdly who had come before
could bear the comparison with her, and she knew it. Was it not,
therefore, reasonable to believe that those who followed her might
suffer as much by the contrast?

But these feelings of satisfaction in the consciousness of her
appropriateness to such a setting as Kingdon Hall were only
momentary, and many of those busy hours of work were interspersed
with lonely fits of weeping, when even Nora was excluded from her
mistress's room. The good creature, who had never been burdened with
mentality, went steadily on with her work and asked no questions;
yet it was not unknown to her that Bettina's unhappiness depended not
altogether upon the fact of her recent widowhood, or even upon the
disastrous consequences of it in her future life.

Two or three times Nora had brought to her mistress letters in a
handwriting which she had not forgotten, and although she made no
sign of suspicion, she did connect these letters with Bettina's
unhappiness.

Certainly it was no wonder that such letters as she received from
Horace now should have so desperately sad an influence on her. In
them he begged, argued, pleaded with her to grant him this one
request, even using her mother's name to touch and change her.
Indeed, there was a tone in these letters that she could scarcely
understand. Keenly conscious as she was of the injustice of which she
had been guilty toward him, it seemed incredible that he could so
ignore it as to manifest any personal interest in her on her own
account. She even felt a certain regret that he could so lose sight
of this flagrant fact. It