“I don’t like it,” said Fred, growing silent, and after a short interval beginning again more earnestly, “Henrietta, neither you nor any one else are keeping anything from me, I trust?” “O, no, no!” said Henrietta, eagerly. “You are quite sure?” “Quite,” responded she. “You know all I know, every bit; and I know all Aunt Geoffrey does, I am sure I do, for she always tells me what Mr. Philip Carey says. I have heard Uncle and Aunt Geoffrey both say strong things about keeping people in the dark, and I am convinced they would not do so.” “I don’t think they would,” said Fred; “but I am not satisfied. Recollect and tell me clearly, are they convinced that this is only recovering slowly--I do not mean that; I know too well that this is not a thing to be got rid of; but do they think that she is going to be as well as usual?” “I do,” said Henrietta, “and you know I am more used to her illness than any of them. Bennet and I were agreeing to-day that, considering how bad the spasms were, and how much fatigue she had been going through, we could not expect her to get on faster.” “You do? But that is not Aunt Geoffrey.” “O! Aunt Geoffrey is anxious, and expected her to get on faster, just like Busy Bee expecting everything to be so quick; but I am sure you could not get any more information from her than from me, and impressions--I am sure you may trust mine, used as I am to watch mamma.” Fred asked no more; but it was observable that from that day he never lost one of his mother’s little notes, placing them as soon as read in his pocket-book, and treasuring them carefully. He also begged Henrietta to lend him a miniature of her mother, taken at the time of her marriage. It represented her in all her youthful loveliness, with the long ringlets and plaits of dark brown hair hanging on her neck, the arch suppressed smile on her lips, and the laughing light in her deep blue eye. He looked at it for a little while, and then asked Henrietta if she thought that she could find, among the things sent from Rocksand which had not yet been unpacked, another portrait, taken in the earlier months of her widowhood, when she had in some partial degree recovered from her illness, but her life seemed still to hang on a thread. Mrs. Vivian, at whose especial desire it had been taken, had been very fond of it, and had always kept it in her room, and Fred was very anxious to see it again. After a long search, with Bennet’s help, Henrietta found it, and brought it to him. Thin, wan, and in the deep black garments, there was much more general resemblance to her present appearance in this than in the portrait of the beautiful smiling bride. “And yet,” said Fred, as he compared them, “do not you think, Henrietta, that there is more of mamma in the first?” “I see what you mean,” said Henrietta. “You know it is by a much better artist.”