in Dorsetshire on his first arrival there had seen this done;
and bore testimony of the fact that the man so treated was the man
who had taken the hunting-lodge in England. This same acquaintance
had been one of the party adverse to Talbot in the row which had
followed, and he could not, therefore, be got to say that he had
seen him dead. But other evidence had gone to show that the man who
had been so extruded was the man who had perished; and the French
lawyer whom Mr. Wainwright had employed, at last assured the poor
broken-hearted clergyman that he might look upon it as proved. "Had
he not been dead," said the lawyer, "the inquiry which has been
made would have traced him out alive." And thus his daughter was
instructed to put on her widow's cap, and her mother again called her
Mrs. Talbot.

Indeed, at that time they hardly knew what to call her, or how to act
in the wisest and most befitting manner. Among those who had truly
felt for them in their misfortunes, who had really pitied them and
encountered them with loving sympathy, the kindest and most valued
friend had been the vicar of a neighbouring parish. He himself was
a widower without children; but living with him at that time, and
reading with him, was a young gentleman whose father was just dead,
a baronet of large property, and an Irishman. This was Sir Thomas
Fitzgerald.

It need not now be told how this young man's sympathies were also
excited, or how sympathy had grown into love. In telling our tale
we fain would not dwell much on the cradledom of our Meleager. The
young widow in her widow's cap grew to be more lovely than she
had ever been before her miscreant husband had seen her. They who
remembered her in those days told wondrous tales of her surprising
loveliness;--how men from London would come down to see her in the
parish church; how she was talked of as the Dorsetshire Venus, only
that unlike Venus she would give a hearing to no man; how sad she was
as well as lovely; and how impossible it was found to win a smile
from her.

But though she could not smile, she could love; and at last she
accepted the love of the young baronet. And then the father, who had
so grossly neglected his duty when he gave her in marriage to an
unknown rascally adventurer, endeavoured to atone for such neglect
by the severest caution with reference to this new suitor. Further
inquiries were made. Sir Thomas went over to Paris himself with that
other clergyman. Lawye