d.

With Miss Manvers Mrs. Hamilton was much pleased. Gentle and unassuming,
she won her way to every heart that knew her; she was the only remaining
scion of Mrs. Hamilton's own family, and she felt pleased that by her
union with Percy the families of Manvers and Hamilton would be yet more
closely connected. She had regretted much, at a former time, the
extinction of the line of Delmont; for she had recalled those visions of
her girlhood, when she had looked to her brother to support the ancient
line, and gilding it with naval honours, bid it stand forth as it had
done some centuries before. Mrs. Hamilton had but little of what is
termed family pride, but these feelings were associated with the brother
whom she had so dearly loved, and whose loss she so painfully deplored.

The season of Christmas passed more cheerfully than Ellen had dared to
hope. The scene was entirely changed; never before had they passed a
Christmas anywhere but at Oakwood, and that simple circumstance
prevented the void in that domestic circle from being so sadly felt.
That Herbert was in the thoughts of all his family, that it was an
effort for them to retain the cheerfulness which in them was ever the
characteristic of the season, we will not deny, but affliction took not
from the calm beauty which ever rested round Mr. Hamilton's hearth. All
appeared as if an even more hallowed and mellowed light was cast around
them; for it displayed, even more powerfully than when unalloyed
prosperity was their portion, the true beauty of the religious
character. Herbert and Mary were not lost to them; they were but removed
to another sphere, that eternal Home, to which all who loved them looked
with an eye of faith.

Sir George Wilmot was the only guest at Richmond during the Christmas
season, but so long had he been a friend of the family and of Lord
Delmont's, when Mrs. Hamilton was a mere child, that he could scarcely
be looked on in the light of a mere guest. The kind old man had sorrowed
deeply for Herbert's death, had felt himself attracted even more
irresistibly to his friends in their sorrow than even in their joy, and
so constantly had he been invited to make his stay at Mr. Hamilton's
residence, wherever that might be, that he often declared he had now no
other home. The tale of Edward's peril interested him much; he would
make Ellen repeat it over and over again, and admire the daring rashness
which urged the young sailor not to defer his retur