ly. He also begged Henrietta
to lend him a miniature of her mother, taken at the time of her
marriage. It represented her in all her youthful loveliness, with the
long ringlets and plaits of dark brown hair hanging on her neck, the
arch suppressed smile on her lips, and the laughing light in her deep
blue eye. He looked at it for a little while, and then asked Henrietta
if she thought that she could find, among the things sent from Rocksand
which had not yet been unpacked, another portrait, taken in the earlier
months of her widowhood, when she had in some partial degree recovered
from her illness, but her life seemed still to hang on a thread. Mrs.
Vivian, at whose especial desire it had been taken, had been very fond
of it, and had always kept it in her room, and Fred was very anxious to
see it again. After a long search, with Bennet's help, Henrietta found
it, and brought it to him. Thin, wan, and in the deep black garments,
there was much more general resemblance to her present appearance in
this than in the portrait of the beautiful smiling bride. "And yet,"
said Fred, as he compared them, "do not you think, Henrietta, that there
is more of mamma in the first?"

"I see what you mean," said Henrietta. "You know it is by a much better
artist."

"Yes," said he, "the other is like enough in feature,--more so certainly
to anything we have ever seen: but what a difference! And yet what is
it? Look! Her eyes generally have something melancholy in their look,
and yet I am sure those bright happy ones put me much more in mind of
hers than these, looking so weighed down with sorrow. And the sweet
smile, that is quite her own!"

"If you could but see her now, Fred," said Henrietta, "I think you would
indeed say so. She has now and then a beautiful little pink flush, that
lights up her eyes as well as her cheeks; and when she smiles and talks
about those old times with papa, she does really look just like the
miniature, all but her thinness."

"I do not half like to hear of all that talking about my father,"
murmured Fred to himself as he leant back. Henrietta at first opened her
eyes; then a sudden perception of his meaning flashed over her, and she
began to speak of something else as fast as she could.

Uncle Geoffrey came on Saturday afternoon, and after paying a
minute's visit to Fred, had a conference of more than an hour with his
sister-in-law. Fred did not seem pleased with his sister's information
that "it was on