“Very well,” said Philip; “and I'll tell you what simpletons are. They are little transparent-looking creatures that look shallow, but are as deep as Old Nick, and make you love them in spite of your judgment. They are the most artful of their sex; for they always achieve its great object, to be loved--the very thing that clever women sometimes fail in.” “Well, and if we are not to be loved, why live at all--such useless things as I am?” said Rosa simply. So Philip took charge of her money, and agreed to help her save money for her little Christopher. Poverty should never destroy him, as it had his father. As months rolled on, she crept out into public a little; but always on foot, and a very little way from home. Youth and sober life gradually restored her strength, but not her color, nor her buoyancy. Yet she was perhaps more beautiful than ever; for a holy sorrow chastened and sublimed her features: it was now a sweet, angelic, pensive beauty, that interested every feeling person at a glance. She would visit no one; but a twelvemonth after her bereavement, she received a few chosen visitors. One day a young gentleman called, and sent up his card, “Lord Tadcaster,” with a note from Lady Cicely Treherne, full of kindly feeling. Uncle Philip had reconciled her to Lady Cicely; but they had never met. Mrs. Staines was much agitated at the very name of Lord Tadcaster; but she would not have missed seeing him for the world. She received him with her beautiful eyes wide open, to drink in every lineament of one who had seen the last of her Christopher. Tadcaster was wonderfully improved: he had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that became him wonderfully. He seemed dazzled at first by Mrs. Staines, but murmured that Lady Cicely had told him to come, or he would not have ventured. “Who can be so welcome to me as you?” said she, and the tears came thick in her eyes directly. Soon, he hardly knew how, he found himself talking of Staines, and telling her what a favorite he was, and all the clever things he had done. The tears streamed down her cheeks, but she begged him to go on telling her, and omit nothing. He complied heartily, and was even so moved by the telling of his friend's virtues, and her tears and sobs, that he mingled his tears with hers. She rewarded him by giving him her hand as she turned away her tearful face to indulge the fresh burst of grief his sympathy evoked. When he was leaving, she said, in her simple way, “Bless you”--“Come again,” she said: “you have done a poor widow good.” Lord Tadcaster was so interested and charmed, he would gladly have come back next day to see her; but he restrained that extravagance, and waited a week.