ht Sutton home, and cousins, and on the
other hand, then, Frank was always telling her about his school friend
Geoffrey Langford. At last Frank brought him home from Oxford one Easter
vacation. It was when the general was in command at ----, and Beatrice
was in the midst of all sorts of gaieties, the mistress of the house,
entertaining everybody, and all exactly what a novel would call
brilliant."

"Were you there, mamma?"

"Yes, Beatrice had made a point of our coming to stay with her, and very
droll it was to see how she and Geoffrey were surprised at each other;
she to find her brother's guide, philosopher, and friend, the Langford
who had gained every prize, a boyish-looking, boyish-mannered youth,
very shy at first, and afterwards, excellent at giggling and making
giggle; and he to find one with the exterior of a fine gay lady, so
really simple in tastes and habits."

"Was Aunt Geoffrey ever pretty?" asked Fred.

"She is just what she was then, a little brown thing with no actual
beauty but in her animation and in her expression. I never saw a really
handsome person who seemed to me nearly as charming. Then she had, and
indeed has now, so much air and grace, so much of what, for want of a
better word, I must call fashion in her appearance, that she was always
very striking."

"Yes," said Henrietta, "I can quite see that; it is not gracefulness,
and it is not beauty, nor is it what she ever thinks of, but there is
something distinguished about her. I should look twice at her if I met
her in the street, and expect her to get into a carriage with a coronet.
And then and there they fell in love, did they?"

"In long morning expeditions with the ostensible purpose of sketching,
but in which I had all the drawing to myself, while the others talked
either wondrous wisely or wondrous drolly. However, you must not suppose
that anything of the novel kind was said then; Geoffrey was only twenty,
and Beatrice seemed as much out of his reach as the king's daughter of
Hongarie."

"O yes, of course," said Henrietta, "but that only makes it more
delightful! Only to think of Uncle and Aunt Geoffrey having a novel in
their history."

"That there are better novels in real life than in stories, is a truth
or a truism often repeated, Henrietta," said her mother with a soft
sigh, which she repressed in an instant, and proceeded: "Poor Frank's
illness and death at Oxford brought them together the next year in a
very different