officer.
The General knew that it was the only son of Lord Chetwynde, for whom
he had written, and whom he was expecting; and now, as he sat there
with his eyes riveted on this singular figure, he was amazed at the
expression of her face.

Her eyes were large and dark and mysterious. Her face bore
unmistakable traces of sorrow. Deep lines were graven on her pale
forehead, and on her wan, thin cheeks. Her hair was white as snow,
and her complexion was of an unearthly grayish hue. It was a
memorable face--a face which, once seen, might haunt one long
afterward. In the eyes there was tenderness and softness, yet the
fashion of the mouth and chin seemed to speak of resolution and
force, in spite of the ravages which age or sorrow had made. She
stood quite unconscious of the General's presence, looking at the
portrait with a fixed and rapt expression. As she gazed her face
changed in its aspect. In the eyes there arose unutterable longing
and tenderness; love so deep that the sight of it thus unconsciously
expressed might have softened the hardest and sternest nature; while
over all her features the same yearning expression was spread.
Gradually, as she stood, she raised her thin white hands and clasped
them together, and so stood, intent upon the portrait, as though she
found some spell there whose power was overmastering.

At the sight of so weird and ghostly a figure the General was
strangely moved. There was something startling in such an apparition.
At first there came involuntarily half-superstitious thoughts. He
recalled all those mysterious beings of whom he had ever heard whose
occupation was to haunt the seats of old families. He thought of the
White Lady of Avenel, the Black Lady of Scarborough, the Goblin Woman
of Hurst, and the Bleeding Nun. A second glance served to show him,
however, that she could by no possibility fill the important post of
Family Ghost, but was real flesh and blood. Yet even thus she was
scarcely less impressive. Most of all was he moved by the sorrow of
her face. She might serve for Niobe with her children dead; she might
serve for Hecuba over the bodies of Polyxena and Polydore. The
sorrows of woman have ever been greater than those of man. The widow
suffers more than the widower; the bereaved mother than the bereaved
father. The ideals of grief are found in the faces of women, and
reach their intensity in the woe that meets our eyes in the Mater
Dolorosa. This woman was one of the gr