can not go to her, as I
should do-but for poor Hermy's position. You will explain this, Harry."
Harry, blushing up to his forehead, declared that Florence would require
no explanation, and that she would certainly make the visit as proposed.
"I wish to see her, Harry--so much. And if I do not see her now, I may
never have another chance."

It was nearly a week after this that Florence went across to the great
house with Mrs. Clavering and Fanny. I think that she understood the
nature of the visit she was called upon to make, and no doubt she
trembled much at the coming ordeal. She was going to see her great
rival--her rival, who had almost been preferred to her--nay, who had
been preferred to her for some short space of time, and whose claims as
to beauty and wealth were so greatly superior to her own. And this woman
whom she was to see had been the first love of the man whom she now
regarded as her own, and would have been about to be his wife at this
moment had it not been for her own treachery to him. Was she so
beautiful as people said? Florence, in the bottom of her heart, wished
that she might have been saved from this interview.

The three ladies from the rectory found the two ladies at the great
house sitting together in the small drawing-room. Florence was so
confused that she could hardly bring herself to speak to Lady Clavering,
or so much as look at Lady Ongar. She shook hands with the elder sister,
and knew that her hand was then taken by the other. Julia at first spoke
a very few words to Mrs. Clavering, and Fanny sat herself down beside
Hermione. Florence took a chair at a little distance, and was left there
for a few minutes without notice. For this she was very thankful, and by
degrees was able to fix her eyes on the face of the woman whom she so
feared to see, and yet on whom she so desired to look. Lady Clavering
was a mass of ill-arranged widow's weeds. She had assumed in all its
grotesque ugliness those paraphernalia of outward woe which women have
been condemned to wear, in order that for a time they may be shorn of
all the charms of their sex. Nothing could be more proper or unbecoming
than the heavy, drooping, shapeless blackness in which Lady Clavering
had enveloped herself. But Lady Ongar, though also a widow, though as
yet a widow of not twelve months' standing, was dressed--in weeds, no
doubt, but in weeds which had been so cultivated that they were as good
as flowers. She was very beautifu