shy and
awkward speaker, was an incisive and graceful writer.

Yet, in his innermost self, Graham shivered when he read that epitaph,
it expressed so emphatically the reverential nature of the love which
Lady Janet had inspired--the genial influences which the holiness of
a character so active in doing good had diffused around it. It brought
vividly before Graham that image of perfect spotless womanhood. And
a voice within him asked, "Would that cenotaph be placed amid the
monuments of an illustrious lineage if the secret known to thee could
transpire? What though the lost one were really as unsullied by sin as
the world deems, would the name now treasured as an heirloom not be a
memory of gall and a sound of shame?"

He remained so silent after putting down the inscription, that the Duke
said modestly: "My dear Graham, I see that you do not like what I have
written. Your pen is much more practised than mine. If I did not ask
you to compose the epitaph, it was because I thought it would please
you more in coming, as a spontaneous tribute due to her, from the
representative of her family. But will you correct my sketch, or give me
another according to your own ideas?"

"I see not a word to alter," said Graham; "forgive me if my silence
wronged my emotion; the truest eloquence is that which holds us too mute
for applause."

"I knew you would like it. Leopold is always so disposed to underrate
himself," said the duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her
husband's shoulder. "Epitaphs are so difficult to write-especially
epitaphs on women of whom in life the least said the better. Janet was
the only woman I ever knew whom one could praise in safety."

"Well expressed," said the Duke, smiling: "and I wish you would make
that safety clear to some lady friends of yours, to whom it might serve
as a lesson. Proof against every breath of scandal herself, Janet King
never uttered and never encouraged one ill-natured word against another.
But I am afraid, my dear fellow, that I must leave you to a tete-a-tete
with Eleanor. You know that I must be at the House this evening--I only
paired till half-past nine."

"I will walk down to the House with you, if you are going on foot."

"No," said the Duchess; "you must resign yourself to me for at least
half an hour. I was looking over your aunt's letters to-day, and I found
one which I wish to show you; it is all about yourself, and written
within the last few months of her life