of observation in Mrs. Frederick Langford, and by
her own daughter.

"Eh!" said her grandfather. Then answering his mental objection in
another tone, "Ay, ay, no will for her own pleasure; that depends more
on you than on any one else."

"I would do anything on earth for her!" said Henrietta, feeling it from
the bottom of her heart.

"I am sure you would, my dear," said Mr. Langford, "and she deserves it.
There are few like her, and few that have gone through so much. To think
of her as she was when last she was here and to look at her now! Well,
it won't do to talk of it; but I thought when I saw her face yesterday,
that I could see, as well as believe, it was all for the best for her,
as I am sure it was for us."

He was interrupted just as they reached the gate by the voice of his
eldest son calling "Out late, sir," and looking round, Henrietta saw
what looked in the darkness like a long procession, Uncle and Aunt
Roger, and their niece, and all the boys, as far down as William, coming
to the Hall for the regular Christmas dinner-party.

Joining company, Henrietta walked with Jessie and answered her inquiries
whether she had got wet or cold in the morning; but it was in an absent
manner, for she was all the time dwelling on what her grandfather had
been saying. She was calling up in imagination the bright scenes of her
mother's youth; those delightful games of which she had often heard, and
which she could place in their appropriate setting now that she knew the
scenes. She ran up to her room, where she found only Bennet, her mother
having dressed and gone down; and sitting down before the fire, and
resigning her curls to her maid, she let herself dwell on the ideas the
conversation had called up, turning from the bright to the darker side.
She pictured to herself the church, the open grave, her uncles and her
grandfather round it, the villagers taking part in their grief, the old
carpenter's averted head--she thought what must have been the agony of
the moment, of laying in his untimely grave one so fondly loved, on whom
the world was just opening so brightly,--and the young wife--the
infant children--how fearful it must have been! "It was almost a cruel
dispensation," thought Henrietta. "O, how happy and bright we might have
been! What would it not have been to hold by his hand, to have his kiss,
to look for his smile! And mamma, to have had her in all her joyousness
and blitheness, with no ill health, and no