features: it was now a sweet, angelic,
pensive beauty, that interested every feeling person at a glance.

She would visit no one; but a twelvemonth after her bereavement, she
received a few chosen visitors.

One day a young gentleman called, and sent up his card, "Lord
Tadcaster," with a note from Lady Cicely Treherne, full of kindly
feeling. Uncle Philip had reconciled her to Lady Cicely; but they had
never met.

Mrs. Staines was much agitated at the very name of Lord Tadcaster; but
she would not have missed seeing him for the world.

She received him with her beautiful eyes wide open, to drink in every
lineament of one who had seen the last of her Christopher.

Tadcaster was wonderfully improved: he had grown six inches out at sea,
and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a
model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from
downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek
that became him wonderfully.

He seemed dazzled at first by Mrs. Staines, but murmured that Lady
Cicely had told him to come, or he would not have ventured.

"Who can be so welcome to me as you?" said she, and the tears came thick
in her eyes directly.

Soon, he hardly knew how, he found himself talking of Staines, and
telling her what a favorite he was, and all the clever things he had
done.

The tears streamed down her cheeks, but she begged him to go on telling
her, and omit nothing.

He complied heartily, and was even so moved by the telling of his
friend's virtues, and her tears and sobs, that he mingled his tears with
hers. She rewarded him by giving him her hand as she turned away her
tearful face to indulge the fresh burst of grief his sympathy evoked.

When he was leaving, she said, in her simple way, "Bless you"--"Come
again," she said: "you have done a poor widow good."

Lord Tadcaster was so interested and charmed, he would gladly have
come back next day to see her; but he restrained that extravagance, and
waited a week.

Then he visited her again. He had observed the villa was not rich
in flowers, and he took her down a magnificent bouquet, cut from his
father's hot-houses. At sight of him, or at sight of it, or both, the
color rose for once in her pale cheek, and her pensive face wore a sweet
expression of satisfaction. She took his flowers, and thanked him for
them, and for coming to see her.

Soon they got on the only topic she cared for, and, in the