course of
this second conversation, he took her into his confidence, and told her
he owed everything to Dr. Staines. "I was on the wrong road altogether,
and he put me right. To tell you the truth, I used to disobey him now
and then, while he was alive, and I was always the worse for it; now he
is gone, I never disobey him. I have written down a lot of wise, kind
things he said to me, and I never go against any one of them. I call it
my book of oracles. Dear me, I might have brought it with me."

"Oh, yes! why didn't you?" rather reproachfully.

"I will bring it next time."

"Pray do."

Then she looked at him with her lovely swimming eyes, and said tenderly,
"And so here is another that disobeyed him living, but obeys him dead.
What will you think when I tell you that I, his wife, who now worship
him when it is too late, often thwarted and vexed him when he was
alive?"

"No, no. He told me you were an angel, and I believe it."

"An angel! a good-for-nothing, foolish woman, who sees everything too
late."

"Nobody else should say so before me," said the little gentleman
grandly. "I shall take HIS word before yours on this one subject. If
ever there was an angel, you are one; and oh, what would I give if I
could but say or do anything in the world to comfort you!"

"You can do nothing for ME, dear, but come and see me often, and talk to
me as you do--on the one sad theme my broken heart has room for."

This invitation delighted Lord Tadcaster, and the sweet word "dear,"
from her lovely lips, entered his heart, and ran through all his veins
like some rapturous but dangerous elixir. He did not say to himself,
"She is a widow with a child, feels old with grief, and looks on me as a
boy who has been kind to her." Such prudence and wariness were hardly to
be expected from his age. He had admired her at first sight, very nearly
loved her at their first interview, and now this sweet word opened a
heavenly vista. The generous heart that beat in his small frame burned
to console her with a life-long devotion and all the sweet offices of
love.

He ordered his yacht to Gravesend--for he had become a sailor--and
then he called on Mrs. Staines, and told her, with a sort of sheepish
cunning, that now, as his yacht HAPPENED to be at Gravesend, he could
come and see her very often. He watched her timidly, to see how she
would take that proposition.

She said, with the utmost simplicity, "I'm very glad of it."

Then he pro