interesting and delicious as all lovestories are to girls of my age, eager to go the way their mothers and grandmothers went, only believing that with themselves the great drama of life would be played out in a far higher manner as it never has been played before.

I craved for even a word or two concerning the past to fall from those lips -what sweet lips they must have been when, at only sixteen, they repeated the marriage vows!-but none did fall. The love-story never came. And, kind as she was, there was something about my hostess which at once excited and repressed curiosity. What she chose to reveal, of her own accord, was one thing; but to attempt to extract it from her was quite another. You felt that at the first daring question she would wither you with her cold rebuke, or in her calm and utterly impassive courtesy speak of something else, as if she had never heard you. The proof-armour of perfect politeness-as smooth and glittering as steel, and as invulnerable-was hers, to a degree

that I never saw in any other woman. Though from the very beginning of our acquaintance, either from some instinctive sympathy, or from the natural tendency of old age to go back upon its past, especially to the young, with whom it can both reveal and conceal as much as it chooses, Lady de Bougainville often let fall fragments of her most private history, which an ingenious fancy could easily put together and fit in, so as to arrive at the truth of things-a much deeper truth than she was aware of having betrayed-still, in all my relations towards her I never dared to ask her a direct question. She would have repelled and resented it immediately.

So, even on this first day, I had the sense to be content with learning no more than she condescended to tell me : in fact I did little else than follow her about the house, and listen while she talked.

Her conversation at once charmed and puzzled me. It was more "like a book," as the phrase is, than any person's I had ever met; yet it sounded neither stilted nor affected. It was merely that, from

long isolation, she expressed herself more as people write or think than as they talk. This, not because she was very learned-I believe she was quite correct in saying she had never been a highlyeducated woman-the cleverness in her was not acquired, but original; just as her exquisite refinement was not taught, but inborn. Yet these two facts made her society so interesting. Conversing with her and with every-day people was as different as passing from Shakspeare to the daily newspaper.

It was impossible that such an influence should not affect a girl of my age and disposition-suddenly, decisively, overwhelmingly. I still recall, with an intoxication of delight, that soft spring morning, that sunny spring afternoonfor, luncheon over, we went wandering about the house again-when I followed her like a dog from room to room, growing every hour more fascinated, and attaching myself to her with that doglike faithfulness, which some one (whom I need not now refer to, but who knows me pretty well by this time) says is a part of my nature. Well, well, never mind! It might be better, and it might be worse for me and for others-that I have this quality. I do not think it was the worse, at any rate, for hermy dear Lady de Bougainville.

I fancy she rather liked having even a dog-like creature tracking her steps, and looking up in her face,-she had been alone so long. Old as she was, and sad as her life must have been, by nature she was certainly a cheerfulminded person. There was still a curious vitality and elasticity about her, as if in her heart she liked being happy, and seeing other people the same.

She especially enjoyed my admiration of the tapestry-room, a large salon-the French would call it; and the word dropped out of her own lips unawares, convincing me more and more of what I did not dare to inquire-her French extraction. She told me, when she first came to Brierley Hall, which had been bought from the Crown, to whom the estate had fallen due, after two centuries of wasteful possession by the

heirs of some valiant soldier, to whom a grateful monarch had originally presented it, this room was covered with the commonest papering, until some lucky hole made her discover underneath what looked like tapestry. Further search laid bare six beautiful pieces of work, in perfect preservation, let into the wall like pictures: just as they hung there now, in the soft faded colouring which gives to old tapestry a look at once so beautiful, and tender, and ghostly; as if one saw hovering over every stitch the shadow of the longdead fingers that sewed it.

"How glad you must have been," I said, "when you tore down the horrid papering, and found out all this."

"Yes, I was very glad. I liked all old things. Besides," she went on, "the tapestry is fine in itself; Vandyke even might have designed it. Possibly one of his pupils did: it seems about that period. See, how well they are drawn, these knights and ladies, kings and queens, foresters with their falcons, horsemen with their steeds. Such a whirl as it is, such numerous figures, so life-like, and so good!"

"And what does it all mean, ma'am?" "Nobody knows; we have never been able to make out. In some things it might answer to the story of Columbus. Here is a man like him coming before a king and queen-Ferdinand and Isabella; they are sitting crowned, you see; and then this looks like his meeting with them afterwards, laden with the riches of the New World. But all is mere guess-work; we have no data to go upon. We used to guess endlessly about our new tapestry the first year, then we accepted it as it was, and guessed no more. But think and she stood gazing dreamily at these faint-coloured, shadowy, life-size figures, which seemed to make the wall alive"think of all the years it took the artist to design, the sempstresses to complete that tapestry, and how their very names are forgotten-nay, we cannot even find out what their handiwork meant to portray! They and it are alike ghosts, as we all shall be soon. 'Man goeth about No. 115.-VOL. XX.

like a shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.'"

"Yes," I said; and with the "priggishness" of youth, being conceited over my knowledge of the Bible, I added the remainder of the text: "he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.'

The moment I had uttered the words I felt that I had made a mistake-more than a mistake, it was an actual cruelty; one of those chance stabs that we sometimes give to the people we love best, and are most tender over;-which afterwards we would give the world to recall: and, though it was done most harmlessly, and in pure ignorance, grieve over and feel as guilty about as if we had committed an actual crime.

I saw I had somehow unawares struck Lady de Bougainville to the very heart. Not that she showed it much; she did not speak-no, I forget, I think she did speak, making some commonplace remark about my familiarity with Scripture; but there came a grey shadow all over her face, the features quivered visibly, she turned away, and suddenly sat down in the broad window-sill, clasping her arms together on her lap, and looking out at the view;-then, beyond the view, up to the rosy floating clouds of the spring sunset, until gradually its beauty seemed to soothe her, and take away her pain.

By and by I ventured to ask, chiefly to break the silence, whether she ever sat in this room. It was a very large room, with six windows, and a good view from each; but its size and ghostliness and the dim figures on the walls would make it rather "eerie" to sit in, especially of evenings.

"Do you think So, child? I do not. I often stay here, quite alone, until bedtime. Would you like to see my bedroom? Perhaps you will think that a more 'eerie' place still."

It certainly was. As large fully as the tapestry-room, out of which you passed into it by a short flight of stairs. It was divided in the centre by pillars, between which hung heavy curtains, which at pleasure could be made completely to

C

hide the bed. And such a bed!-a catafalque rather-raised on a daïs, and ascended by steps. To enter it would have been like going to bed in Westminster Abbey, and waking up in it one Iwould have felt as if one were a dead hero lying in state.

What an awful place! I asked timidly if she really slept in that room, and quite alone?

"Oh yes," she answered. "The servants inhabit a different part of the house. Once when I was ill, this winter, my maid wanted to sleep in a corner there; she is a good girl, and very fond of me, but I would not let her. I prefer being quite alone. Seventy," she added, smiling, "is not so nearly fearful of solitude as sixteen."

"And you are really not afraid, ma'am?"

66

"What should I be afraid of? my own company, or the company of those ghosts I spoke of? which are very gentle ghosts, and will never come to you, child," and once more she laid her hand upon my head. I think she rather liked my curls; she said they were "pretty curls." 'Child, when you are as old as I am, you will have found out that after all we must learn to be content with loneliness. For, more or less, we live alone, and assuredly we shall die alone. Who will go with us on that last, last journey? Which of our dear ones have we been able to go with? We can but take them in our arms to the awful shore, see them slip anchor and sail away-whither? We know not."

"But," I whispered, "God knows." Lady de Bougainville started, as if my simple words had cast a sudden light into her mind. "Yes, you are right," she said, "it is good for us always to remember that: we cannot at first, but sometimes we do afterwards. So," turning her eyes on that great catafalque of a bed with its massive draperies and nodding plumes-"I lie down every night and rise up every morning, quite content; thinking, with equal content, that I shall some day lie down there, to rise up no more."

I was awed. Not exactly frightened:

there was nothing to alarm one in that soft measured voice, talking composedly of things we do not usually talk about, and which to young people seem always so startling-but I was awed. I had never thought much about death; had never come face to face with it. It was still to me the mysterious secret of the universe, rather beautiful than terrible. My imagination played with it, often enough, but my heart had never experienced it, not like hers.

Finding nothing to say that seemed worth saying, I went round the room; examining the pictures which hung upon its walls. They seemed all portraits, of different sizes and sorts, from crayon sketches and black silhouettes to fulllength oil paintings-of young people of different ages, from childhood to manhood and womanhood. They had the interest which attaches to all portraits, bad, good, or indifferent, more than to many grander pictures; and I stood and looked at them, wondering who they were, but not daring to inquire, until she solved my difficulty by saying as we went out of the room :

"These are my children." Not "these were," but "these are."-Her six dead children.

"Who is that?" I took courage presently to ask of the man-servant who was laying the table, with glittering plate and delicate glass, more beautiful than any I had ever seen.

"It's Sir Edward, Miss,-my lady's husband."

"Oh, of course," I said, trying to look unconcerned, and speedily quitting the room, for I was a little afraid of that most respectable footman.

But, in truth, I never was more astonished than at this discovery. First, the portrait was in clerical robes; and, though I ought to have known it, I certainly did not know that a Sir" could be also a "Reverend." Then it was such a common face,-good-looking, perhaps, in so far as abundant whiskers, great eyes, rosy cheeks, and a large nose constitute handsomeness; but there was nothing in it,-nothing whatever! Neither thought, feeling, nor intellect were likely ever to have existed under those big bones, covered with comfortable flesh and blood. Perhaps this was partly the artist's fault. He must have been a commonplace artist, from the stiff formal attitude in which he had placed his sitter-at a table, with an open book before him and a crimson curtain behind. But Titian himself would have struggled vainly to impart interest to that round forehead, long weak chin, and rabbit-mouth, with its good-natured, self-complacent smile.

I contrasted the portrait mentally with the living face of Lady de Bougainville, her sharply-cut yet mobile features, her firm close lips, her brilliant eyes. Could it be possible that this man was her husband? Had I, with the imaginative faculty of youth, constructed a romance which never existed? Had her life been, to say the least, a great mistake,-at any rate so far as concerned her marriage? How could she marry a man like that! I know not whether I most pitied, or-may Heaven forgive me my momentary harsh judgment, given with the rash reaction peculiar to young people-condemned

her.

Yes, I was hard; to the living and

some

to the dead likewise. The portrait may not have been like the original: I have seen many a good face so villanously reproduced by an inferior artist, that you would hardly recognise your best friend. But, granting that he was hande-which from after and circumstantial evidence I am pretty sure of still, Sir Edward de Bougainville could never have had either a very clever or very pleasant face. Not even in his youth, when the portrait was painted. It was a presentation portrait, in a heavy gilt frame, which bore the motto, "From an admiring Congregation," of some church in Dublin.

Then, had Sir Edward been an Irishman? It was decidedly an Irish facenot of the broad and flat-nosed, but the dark and good-featured type. De Bougainville was not at all an Irish name; but I knew there had been a considerable influx of French families into Ireland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. How I longed to ask questions! but it was impossible.

At dinner, my hostess sat with her back to the portrait; I, directly opposite to it, and her. The candelabra glimmered between us-how I love the delicate, pure light of wax candles!-glimmered on her softly-tinted old face, set off by the white muslin of her widow's cap, and the rich lace at her throat and on her bosom; upon her shining black silk dress, and her numerous rings. As I have said, her appearance was essentially aristocratic, but she had come to that time of life when only a noble soul will make it so when the most beautiful woman in the world, if she have only beauty to recommend her, fades into commonplace plainness; and neither birth nor breeding will supply the want of what includes and outshines them both-the lamp burning inside the lovely house; and so making it lovely even to its latest moment of decay.

This was exactly what I saw in her, and did not see in Sir Edward de Bougainville. The portrait quite haunted me. I wondered how she could sit underneath it day after day; whether she liked or disliked to look at it, or

whether during long years she had grown so used to it that she scarcely saw it at all. And yet as we rose to retire, those big staring eyes of the dead man seemed to follow her out of the room, as if to inquire, "Have you forgotten me?"

Had she? Can a woman, after ever so sad a wedded life, ever so long a widowhood, quite forget the husband of her youth, the father of her children? There are circumstances when she might do so other circumstances when I almost think she ought. Nevertheless, I doubt if she ever can. This, without any sentimental belief in never-dying love-for love can be killed outright; and when its life has fled, better that its corpse should be buried out of sight: let there be no ridiculous shams kept up, but let a silence complete as that of the grave fall-between even child and parent, husband and wife. Still, as to forgetting? Men may; I cannot tell: but we women never forget.

Lady de Bougainville took my arma mere kindliness, as she required no support, and was much taller than I-and we went out of the dining-room through the hall, where, in spite of the lamp, the moonlight lay visibly on the scagliola pillars, clear and cold. I could not help shivering. She noticed it, and immediately gave orders that instead of the drawing-room we should go and sit in the cedar parlour.

"It will be warmer and more cheerful for you, Winifred; and, besides, I like my cedar parlour; it reminds me of my friend, Miss Harriett Byron. You have read Sir Charles Grandison?'"

I had, and burst into enthusiasm over the "man of men," doubting if there are such men nowadays.

"No, nor ever were," said, with a sharp ring in her voice, Lady de Bougainville.

Then, showing me the wainscotting of cedar-wood, she told me how it also had been discovered, like the tapestry and the oak carvings, when Brierley Hall was put under repair; which had occupied a whole year and more after the house was bought.

"Why did you buy it, if it was so dilapidated?" I asked.

"Because we wanted something old, yet something that would make into a family seat-the root of a numerous race. And we required a large house; there were so many of us then. Now--"

She stopped. Accustomed as she had grown to the past, with much of its pain deadened by the merciful anesthesia of time and old age, still, talking to me, a stranger, seemed to revive it a little. As she stood by the fire, the light shining on her rings a heap of emeralds and diamonds, almost concealing the weddingring, now a mere thread of gold-I could see how she twisted her fingers together, and clasped and unclasped her hands; physical actions implying sharp mental pain.

But she said nothing, and after we had had our coffee-delicious French caféau-lait, served in the most exquisite Sèvres china-she took up a book, and giving me another, we both sat reading quietly, almost without speaking another syllable, until my bedtime.

When I went to bed-early, by her command-she touched my cheeks, French fashion, with her lips. Many will laugh at the confession-but that kiss seemed to thrill me all through with a felicity as deep and intense as that of a young knight who, having won his spurs, receives for the first time the benediction and salutation of his beloved.

When I entered my room, it was bright with firelight and the glow of scarlet curtains. I revelled in its novel luxuries as if I had been accustomed to them all my days. They gratified my taste, my imagination, my senses—shall I say my soul? Yes, a part of one's soul does take pleasure, and has a right to take pleasure, in material comfort and beauty. I had greatly enjoyed wandering over that handsome house, dining at the well-appointed table, spending the evening in the pretty cedar parlour. Now, when I retired into my own chamber, into the innermost chamber of my own heart, how fared it with me?

Let me tell the truth. I sat awhile, wrapped in purely sensuous satisfaction.