aptain almost in a whisper.

"No," said Cheesacre sulkily.

"Nor yet Charlie Fairstairs?"

"I've seen nobody," said Cheesacre.

But at this moment he was compelled to swallow his anger, as Mrs
Greenow, accompanied by her lady guest, came into the room. "Whoever
would have expected two gentlemen to be so punctual," said she,
"especially on market-day!"

"Market-day makes no difference when I come to see you," said
Cheesacre, putting his best foot forward, while Captain Bellfield
contented himself with saying something civil to Charlie. He would
bide his time and ride a waiting race.

The widow was almost gorgeous in her weeds. I believe that she
had not sinned in her dress against any of those canons which the
semi-ecclesiastical authorities on widowhood have laid down as to the
outward garments fitted for gentlemen's relicts. The materials were
those which are devoted to the deepest conjugal grief. As regarded
every item of the written law her suttee worship was carried out to
the letter. There was the widow's cap, generally so hideous, so well
known to the eyes of all men, so odious to womanhood. Let us hope
that such headgear may have some assuaging effect on the departed
spirits of husbands. There was the dress of deep, clinging,
melancholy crape,--of crape which becomes so brown and so rusty,
and which makes the six months' widow seem so much more afflicted
a creature than she whose husband is just gone, and whose crape is
therefore new. There were the trailing weepers, and the widow's
kerchief pinned close round her neck and somewhat tightly over her
bosom. But there was that of genius about Mrs Greenow, that she had
turned every seeming disadvantage to some special profit, and had so
dressed herself that though she had obeyed the law to the letter, she
had thrown the spirit of it to the winds. Her cap sat jauntily on her
head, and showed just so much of her rich brown hair as to give her
the appearance of youth which she desired. Cheesacre had blamed her
in his heart for her private carriage, but she spent more money, I
think, on new crape than she did on her brougham. It never became
brown and rusty with her, or formed itself into old lumpy folds, or
shaped itself round her like a grave cloth. The written law had not
interdicted crinoline, and she loomed as large with weeds, which with
her were not sombre, as she would do with her silks when the period
of her probation should be over. Her weepers were bri