Yet she is happy. There is a look of contented matronhood growing in her face day by day, far sweeter than anything her girlhood could boast. She is very fond of her husband too. It was charming to see the bright blush with which she started up from Mrs. Granton's fireside, the instant Augustus was heard calling outside, “Lis! Lis! Mrs. Treherne! Where's Mrs. Treherne?” “Run away to your husband, my dear. I see he can't do without you. How well she looks, and how happy she seems!” added the old lady, who has apparently forgotten the slight to “my Colin.” By the way, I do not suppose Colin ever actually proposed to our Lisa; only it was a sort of received notion in our family that he would. If he had, his mother never would have brought him here, to be a daily witness of Mrs. Treherne's beauty and contentment; which he bears with a stoicism most remarkable in a young man who has ever been in love with her. Do men so easily forget?--Some, perhaps; not all. It is oftentimes honorable and generous to conquer an unfortunate love; but there is something discreditable in totally ignoring and forgetting it. I doubt, I should rather despise a man who despised his first love, even for me. Let me see: where did I leave myself? Oh, sitting by Mrs. Granton's fire; or helping; her to take off her things--a sinecure office, for her “things”--no other word befits them--are popped off and on with the ease and untidiness of fifteen, instead of the preciseness of sixty-five: order and regularity being omitted by Providence in the manufacture of this dear old lady. Also listening--which is no sinecure; for she always has plenty to say about everything and everybody, except herself. I may never have said it in so many words, but I love Mrs. Granton. Every line in her nice old withered face is pleasant to me; every creak of her quick footstep; every angular fold in her everlasting black silk gown--a very shabby gown often, for she does not care how she dresses. She is by no means one of your picturesque, ancient gentlewomen, looking as if they had just stepped out of a gilt-frame--she is only a little, active, bright old lady. As a girl, she might have been pretty--I am not sure, though she has still a delicate expressive mouth, and soft grey eyes; but I am very sure that she often looks beautiful now. And why?--for, guessing what all the grand people at the dinner to-night will think of her and myself, I cannot help smiling as this application of the word--because she has one of the most beautiful natures that can adorn an old woman--or a young one, either: all loving-kindness, energy, cheerfulness. Because age has failed to sour her; affliction to harden her heart. Of all people I know, she is the quickest to praise, the slowest to judge, the gentlest to condemn. A living homily on the text, which, specifying the trinity of Christian virtues, names--“these three--_but the greatest of these is charity_.”