, with a square forehead and a square
chin, and she had brought up seven children most successfully. Now,
in these days of her husband's parliamentary prosperity, she was
carried about to dinners; and in her way she enjoyed them. She was
not too shy to eat, and had no wish whatever either to be talked to
or to talk. To sit easily on a sofa and listen to the buzz of voices
was life and society to her. Perhaps in those long hours she was
meditating on her children's frocks or her husband's linen. But they
never seemed to be long to her.

Mr. Stistick was standing on the rug before the fire, preparing for
his first onslaught on Baron Brawl, when the servant announced Mr.
Bertram.

"Ah! Bertram, I'm delighted to see you," said Sir Henry;--"doubly
so, as dinner is ready. Judge, you know my friend Bertram, by name,
at any rate?" and some sort of half-introduction was performed.
"He who moved all Oxford from its propriety?" said the baron. But
Bertram neither saw him nor heard him. Neither his eyes nor his ears
were at his command.

As he took his host's proffered hand, he glanced his eyes for a
moment round the room. There she sat, and he had to speak to her as
best he might. At his last interview with her he had spoken freely
enough, and it all rushed now upon his mind. Then how little he had
made of her, how lightly he had esteemed her! Now, as she sat there
before him his spirit acknowledged her as a goddess, and he all
but feared to address her. His face, he knew, was hot and red; his
manner, he felt, was awkward. He was not master of himself, and when
such is the case with a man, the fact always betrays itself.

But he did speak to her. "How do you do, Lady Harcourt?" he said, and
he put his hand out, and he felt the ends of her fingers once more
within his own.

And she spoke too, probably. But pretty women can say almost as much
as is necessary on such occasions as this without opening their lips.
Whether she spoke, or whether she did not, it was the same to him.
He certainly did not hear her. But her fingers did touch his hand,
her eyes did rest upon his face; and then, in that moment of time,
he thought of Jerusalem, of the Mount of Olives, of those rides
at Littlebath, and of that last meeting, when all, all had been
shattered to pieces.

"There are five hundred and fifty-five thousand male children between
the ages of nine and twelve," said Mr. Stistick, pursuing some
wondrous line of argument, as Bertram