seen her since she had risen from her
girlish bloom into the self-possession of a wife, matured and stilled by
premature experience. She came forward, holding out her hand, when her
visitor, with a reluctance and diffidence quite unsuitable to her
superior age, slowly advanced.

"Thank you," she said at once, "for coming. I know without a word how
disagreeable it is to you, how little you wished it. You have come
against your will, and you think against my will, Mrs. Warrender; but
indeed it is not so. It is a comfort and help to me to have you."

"If that is so, Lady Markland----"

"That is why you have come," she said. "It is so. I know you have come
unwillingly. You heard--they have taken the boy from me."

"But only for this day."

"Only for the hour, I hope. It is supposed to be too much for me to go."
Here she smiled, with a nervous movement of her face. "Nothing is too
much for me. You know a little about it, but not all. Do you remember
him when we were married, Mrs. Warrender? I recollect you were one of
the first people I saw."

This sudden plunge into the subject for which she was least prepared--for
all her ideas of condolence had been driven out of her mind by the young
woman's demeanour, the open window, the cheerful and commonplace air of
the room--confused Mrs. Warrender greatly. "I remember Lord Markland
almost all his life," she said.

"Here is the miniature of him that was done for me before we were
married," said Lady Markland, rising hurriedly, and bringing it from
the table. "Look at it; did you ever see a more hopeful face? He was so
fresh; he was so full of spirits. Who could have thought there was any
canker in that face?"

"There was not then," said the elder woman, looking through a mist of
natural tears--the tears of that profound regret for a life lost which
are more bitter, almost, than personal sorrow--at the miniature. She
remembered him so well, and how everybody thought all would come right
with the poor young fellow when he was so happily married and had a
home.

"Ah, but there was!--nobody told me; though if all the world had told me
it would not have made any difference. Mrs. Warrender, he is like that
now. Everything else is gone. He looks as he did at twenty, as good and
as pure. What do you think it means? Does it mean anything? Or is there
only some physical interpretation of it, as these horrible men say?"

"My dear," said Mrs. Warrender, quite subdued, "they say it