produce in it nothing worth the hiding, nor to receive, either, anything of that serious kind; while the course of time, that had begun to turn the fair features of Mrs Willoughby rather large, giving her form a somewhat more than matronly fulness, had so increased this peculiarity in her disposition as to make strangers think her insipid. Older friends thought very far otherwise, and it was, in some way, chiefly old friends Mrs Willoughby had had at all; but neither they, the oldest of them, nor even her children, perhaps, could so much as imagine the truth of heart, the perfect trust, the intimate, unhesitating appreciation, which, since they were first gained by him, her husband had been ever knowing better. Indolently placid as she might seem even to ordinary troubles, tumults, and embarrassments, as if the world’s care entered no imagination of hers—quietly busied, with attention fixed on household matters, knitting or sewing in her endless, noiseless manner—yet if his eye had shown anxiety, if he had ceased to read, if he paced the room, or had been very silent, a kind of divination there was, that, without any watching or any questioning, would have roused her up—the work suspended on her lap, her cheek losing the old dimple-mark which maturity had deepened there, and her glance widened with concern; till, if he had still not spoken, Lady Willoughby would have risen up gradually, looking round as if startled from a sort of mild dream, and have moved towards him, beginning of her own accord—which was a rare thing—to speak. Not necessarily, indeed, though they had been alone in the room, to invite confidence by any inquiry; but rather in the way of performing some slight office that might have been neglected, or with endeavours at such interesting news and small-talk as, to speak truth, she scarcely shone in, unsupported—nor any the better for the confused sense she evidently had at these times of having been by some means in fault, and having failed to be a very lively companion. She was of a plain country squire’s family, in fact; and in her day, if sent at all to boarding-schools, they had not lingered long over music, still less at flower-painting or the sciences; while with successive sisters waiting at home for their turn, as she had had, it was but to finish off baking and mending, with dancing and embroidery, then to come back, and bake and mend again. So when the dancing ended with marriage, the embroidery at the first birth, it might have been thought the officer had gained no very valuable society, sometimes in barrack-lodgings, sometimes abroad, sometimes for distant communication by letter; she might, at least, have been expected to form no great ornament in London circles, or among country people at Stoke Manor-house. Still there had been nothing in all their previous intercourse so precious to him as his wife’s letters, when almost for the first time, in her own natural way, she had to