ars." And she looked at him seriously.

"Half a lifetime!" agreed Hector, with a whimsical smile.

"Oh! you are laughing at me!" she said, and there was a cloud in the
blue stars which looked up at him.

He made a movement nearer her--while his deep voice took every tone of
tenderness.

"Indeed, indeed I am not--you dear little girl! I love to hear of your
day. I was only smiling to think that six years ago you were a baby
child, and I was then an old man in feeling--let me see, I was
twenty-five, and I was in Russia."

He stopped suddenly; there were some circumstances which, sitting there
beside her, he would rather not remember connected with Russia.

This was one of the peculiarities of Theodora. There was something about
her which seemed to wither up all low or vicious things. It was not that
she filled people with ascetic thoughts of saints and angels and their
mother in heaven, only she seemed suddenly to enhance simple joys with
beauty and charm.

They talked on for half an hour, and with every moment he discovered
fresh qualities of sweetness and light in her gentle heart.

She was not ill educated either, but she had never speculated upon
things, she took them for granted just as they were, and _Jean d'Agreve_
was probably the only awakening book she had ever read.

Hector all at once seemed to realize his mother's vision, and to
understand for the first time what marriage might mean. That to possess
this exquisite bit of God's finished work for his very own, to live with
her in the country, at old Bracondale, to see her honored and adored,
surrounded by little children--his children--would be a dream of bliss
far, far beyond any dream he had ever known. A domestic, tender dream of
sweetness that he had always laughed at before as a final thing when
life's other joys should be over, and now it seemed suddenly to be the
only heaven and completion of his soul's desire.

Then he remembered Josiah Brown with a hideous pang of pain and
bitterness--and they went in to lunch.

* * * * *

Theodora was so gay! Captain Fitzgerald and Mrs. McBride were already
seated when they joined them in the restaurant. Most of the other
visitors had finished--it was almost two o'clock.

There was a good deal of black middle in the widow's eyes, Theodora
noticed, and wondered to herself if she had had a happy and exciting
hour too. Papa looked complacent and handsomer than ever, she thoug