On the next day Miss Cherry paid a similar visit of condolence, but she was not so tenderly sympathetic as, under other circumstances, she would naturally have been. She looked at the new-made widow with a critical eye. A short time before no one had been more anxious than Miss Cherry that Mrs. Meredith should suffer no harm, should lose no title of respect due to her. She had with her own soft hand struck a blow, the severity of which astonished herself, at her favourite and only brother on Mrs. Meredith’s account; but the sudden revolution in their neighbour’s affairs, instead of touching her heart, closed it. The position was changed, and a hundred tremors and terrors took at once possession of her gentle bosom. Who could doubt what James would wish now--what James would do? and who could doubt that the woman who had permitted him so intimate a friendship would respond to these wishes? This idea leaped at once into the minds of all the lookers-on. Old Sommerville sent the news with a chuckle of grim cynicism yet kindness; Maxwell communicated it with a grudge; and Miss Cherry received it with an instant conviction yet defiance. They had no doubt of what would, nay, must ensue, and jumped at the conclusion with unanimous agreement; and it would be quite true to say that Mr. Meredith’s death brought quite as great a pang to Miss Cherry, who had never seen him, as it did to his wife, though in a different way. If the first marriage, the natural youthful beginning of serious life, brings often with it a train of attendant embarrassments, almost miseries, what is a second marriage to do? Good Miss Cherry’s maidenly mind was shocked by the idea that her brother, so long held up somewhat proudly by the family as an example of conjugal fidelity and true sorrow, had allowed feelings less exalted to get possession of him. And what would Cara do? How would her imaginative delicate being, too finely touched for common issues, conform to the vulgar idea of a stepmother? Miss Cherry grew hot and angry as she thought of it. And a man who had such a child, a grown-up daughter, sweetest and only fit substitute for the mother dead, what did he want with a new companion, a new love? Faugh! to use such a word disgusted her; and that James--_James!_ the most heart-broken and inconsolable of mourners, should come to that! With all this in her mind, it may be supposed that Miss Cherry’s feelings when she went to see Mrs. Meredith and found her in all her crape, crying softly by the fire, were not so sweet as they ought to have been. She said the usual things in the way of consolation--how, as it was to be, perhaps it was best that they had heard of it all at once, and had not been kept in anxiety; and how she supposed such afflictions were necessary for us, though it was very sad that the dear boys had known so little of their father; but, on the other hand, how that fact must soften it to them all, for of course it