ng-room, and hung with some fine old
family portraits and miniatures. Old Squire Mivart had been an
enthusiastic collector of antique china, and the specimens of old
Montelupo and Urbino hanging upon the walls were remarkable as being
the finest in any private collection in this country. Many were the
visits he had made to Italy to acquire those queer-looking old
mediaeval plates, with their crude colouring and rude, inartistic
drawings, and certainly he was an acknowledged expert in antique
porcelain.

The big red-shaded lamp in the centre of the table shed a soft light
upon the snowy cloth, the flowers and the glittering silver; and as my
hostess took her seat she sighed slightly, and for the first time
asked of Ethelwynn.

"I haven't seen her for a week," I was compelled to admit. "Patients
have been so numerous that I haven't had time to go out to see her,
except at hours when calling at a friend's house was out of the
question."

"Do you like the Hennikers?" her mother inquired, raising her eyes
inquiringly to mine.

"Yes, I've found them very agreeable and pleasant."

"H'm," the old lady ejaculated dubiously. "Well, I don't. I met Mrs.
Henniker once, and I must say that I did not care for her in the
least. Ethelwynn is very fond of her, but to my mind she's fast, and
not at all a suitable companion for a girl of my daughter's
disposition. It may be that I have an old woman's prejudices, living
as I do in the country always, but somehow I can never bring myself to
like her."

Mrs. Mivart, like the majority of elderly widows who have given up the
annual visit to London in the season, was a trifle behind the times.
More charming an old lady could not be, but, in common with all who
vegetate in the depths of rural England, she was just a trifle
narrow-minded. In religion, she found fault constantly with the
village parson, who, she declared, was guilty of ritualistic
practices, and on the subject of her daughters she bemoaned the
latter-day emancipation of women, which allowed them to go hither and
thither at their own free will. Like all such mothers, she considered
wealth a necessary adjunct to happiness, and it had been with her
heartiest approval that Mary had married the unfortunate Courtenay,
notwithstanding the difference between the ages of bride and
bridegroom. In every particular the old lady was a typical specimen of
the squire's widow, as found in rural England to-day.

Scarcely had we seated ou