Rose Lascelles, like many another who has squared her life to the rule of expediency rather than right, was a woman thrown away. An ambitious girl, in her marriage with Mr. Lascelles, now deceased, she had been guided by her desire for social advancement, rather than by individual preference, or even a taste for domestic life. He was young, handsome, agreeable--a finished man of the world--thoroughly selfish; and some women would have loved him dearly, but for Rose Vanneck he was simply an eligible partner as heir to a good fortune and a title. So he treated her very badly, outraged her feelings, brought all sorts of people into her drawing-room, spent her money recklessly as his own, and finally drank himself to death, just six months too early to make his wife a peeress; having lived long enough, however, to leave her in the enjoyment of as comfortable a jointure as if he had succeeded to the title, and so far content with her lot that she appreciated the thorough independence of her position; for who is so completely her own mistress as a childless widow, young and attractive, with a balance at her bankers? It is needless to say she had many suitors. Independent of her well-filled purse, the lady's own charms were powerful enough to collect men of all ages, stations, and characters in her train. The clear blue eyes so bright, so frank, might have seemed hard and cold, but for the dark pencilled lashes that shaded their lower as richly as their upper rims; the white even teeth would have been too broad and strong, but for the sweet red lips that disclosed them so graciously in half-saucy, half-confiding, and wholly winning smiles. There might have been a shade too much of colour in her cheek, of auburn in her hair, but that health and rich vitality so obviously imparted to each its lustre and its bloom. There was nobility in her arched brows and regular Norman features, just as there were grace and dignity in her tall, well-rounded figure; nevertheless, something beyond and independent of these physical advantages gifted her with a peculiar fascination of her own. She seemed to bloom in the natural freshness and fragrance of a flower, a meadow, or a landscape; bright and healthy as a cow in a June pasture, a child from its morning tub, as Venus herself glowing and radiant, emerging like a sunrise from the eastern sea!