"Good child!" he said to himself with satisfaction as he saw what she had done in this way. He thought of her and his other children as he dressed, and he thought of his young wife. A charming crayon portrait of her hung in the place of honour above the mantelpiece, on which there were also photographs of her, and of the children, in all stages of their growth. Caroline had collected them from all over the London house. The crayon portrait had been one of two done by a very clever young artist, now a famous one, whom they had met on their honeymoon. This had been the first, and Grafton had thought it had not done justice to his wife's beauty; so the artist, with a smiling shrug of the shoulders, had offered to do another one, which had pleased him much better, and had hung ever since in his bedroom in London. Now, as he looked at this portrait, which had hung in a room he seldom went into, he wondered how he could have been so blind. The beauty, with which he had fallen in love, was there, but the artist had seen much more than the beauty that was on the surface. It told immeasurably more about the sweet young bride than the picture he had made of her afterwards. It told something of what she would be when the beauty of form and feature and colouring should have waned, of what she would have been to-day more than twenty years later. Grafton was not a man who dwelt on the past, and his life had been too prosperous and contented to lead him to look forward very often to the future. He took it as it came, and enjoyed it, without hugging himself too much on the causes of his enjoyment. The only unhappiness he had ever known had been in the loss of his wife, but the wound had healed gradually, and had now ceased to pain him. But it throbbed a little now as he looked at the portrait with new eyes. He and she had talked together of a country house some time in the future of their long lives together--some such house as this, if they should wait until there was enough money. It was just what she would have delighted in. She had been brought up in a beautiful country house, and loved it. Caroline inherited her fine perceptions and many of her tastes from her. It would have been very sweet to have had her companionship now, in this pleasant and even exciting life that was opening up before them. They would all have been intensely happy together.