a child, and a servant had to sit with her at table. To
see her so sitting, speaking with the tones of a deaf-mute not always to
the purpose, and to remember what she had been, was a moving appeal to
all who knew her. Such was the pathos of these two old people in their
affliction, that even the reserve of cities was melted and the
neighbours vied in sympathy and kindness. Where so many were more than
usually helpful, it is hard to draw distinctions; but I am directed and
I delight to mention in particular the good Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr. Thomas
and Mr. Archibald Constable, with both their wives, the Rev. Mr.
Belcombe (of whose good heart and taste I do not hear for the first
time--the news had come to me by way of the Infirmary) and their
next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, Miss Hannah Mayne. Nor should
I omit to mention that John Ruffini continued to write to Mrs. Jenkin
till his own death, and the clever lady known to the world as Vernon Lee
until the end: a touching, a becoming attention to what was only the
wreck and survival of their brilliant friend.

But he to whom this affliction brought the greatest change was the
Captain himself. What was bitter in his lot he bore with unshaken
courage; only once, in these ten years of trial, has Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
seen him weep; for the rest of the time his wife--his commanding officer,
now become his trying child--was served not with patience alone, but with
a lovely happiness of temper. He had belonged all his life to the
ancient, formal, speech-making, compliment-presenting school of courtesy;
the dictates of this code partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty;
and he must now be courteous for two. Partly from a happy illusion,
partly in a tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still
active partner. When he paid a call, he would have her write "with love"
upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go armed
with a bouquet and present it in her name. He even wrote letters for her
to copy and sign: an innocent substitution, which may have caused
surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they ever received, in the hand
of Mrs. Jenkin, the very obvious reflections of her husband. He had
always adored this wife whom he now tended and sought to represent in
correspondence: it was now, if not before, her turn to repay the
compliment; mind enough was left her to perceive his unwearied kindness;
and as her moral qualities seemed to survive qu