Hester was happy, then. Happy in her wealth, her popularity, her authority, in her success and prosperity. Happy, as she sat with Lady Henmarsh, who was clad in the deepest and glossiest of widow's weeds, having been disembarrassed of Sir Timothy by the kind hand of death early in the preceding spring, and was now enjoying Hester's hospitality, which she proposed to enjoy as fully and for as long a period as possible. The scene suggested happiness. The two ladies were seated at the large French window of the room which the former mistress of Middlemeads had occupied as a dressing-room, and which was furnished in a style at once sumptuous and tasteful; yet it was not furnished as in Katharine's time. The conservatory, with the fountain and the marble floor, the aviary, and the flight of marble steps by which the Italian garden was to be reached, were there, but the "Lady-Kilmantan" hangings and furniture, the subject of Mrs. Stanbourne's remonstrance with Katharine, had disappeared. Hester, consistent even in the novel defects she was acquiring, had sent all these things to Ellen's future home. She would dissociate herself as far as possible from Katharine,--her private rooms should bear no trace of her; but she would make a judicious use of articles of property, notwithstanding Gordon noticed the alteration, and gave his wife offence by doing so. "Didn't you like the blue-and-silver things in your dressing-room, Hester? I thought them very pretty." "No," she answered shortly; "blue is horribly unbecoming to me. I have not a faultless fair complexion, you know." "I didn't know complexion had any influence on the choice of furniture," said Gordon, smiling, and quite unconscious of the feelings his careless remark had excited. "Didn't you? No, I don't suppose men understand those things. Read the Duchesse d'Abrantes, and you'll be wiser." The obnoxious blue-and-silver had been replaced by the freshest and prettiest of chintzes; and the apartment, if less splendid, was even more elegant and inviting. Traces of Hester's intellectual tastes were to be seen about it; and Hester herself was no insignificant ornament. The development of her beauty had been steadily going on, and now the new mistress of Middlemeads need not have greatly feared competition with the former. With all the accessories of wealth and refinement around her, Hester Frere was a beautiful woman to the most critical eye--more beautiful indeed to the critical than to the careless; for hers was the beauty of form and expression, the accuracy of feature and symmetry of form, the correct loveliness which is less sympathetic but more satisfying than the lighter, more brilliant, and more striking kinds of beauty. "And you actually had Mr. Thacker's sisters down here for a month, Hester? How very good of you! Were they very dreadful?"