“Sir Denzil Warner has been over here, his ostensible motive a civil inquiry after my health; but I could see that his actual purpose was to hear of you. I told him how happily your simple soul has accommodated itself to an almost conventual seclusion, and a very inferior style of living—whereupon he smiled his rapture, and praised you to the skies. ‘Would that she could accommodate herself to my house as easily,’ he said; ‘she should have every indulgence that an adoring husband could yield her.’ And then he said much more, but as lovers always sing the same repetitive song, and have no more strings to their lyre than the ancients had before Mercury expanded it, I confess to not listening over carefully, and will leave you to imagine the eloquence of a manly and honourable love. Ah, sweetheart! you do wrong to reject him. Thou hast a quiet soothing prettiness of thine own, but art no blazing star of beauty, like the Stewart, to bring a King to thy feet—he would have married her if poor Catherine had not disappointed him by her recovery—and to take a Duke as _pis aller_. Believe me, love, it were wise of you to become Lady Warner, with an unmortgaged estate, and a husband who, in these Republican times, may rise to distinction. He is your only earnest admirer; and a love so steadfast, backed by a fortune so respectable, should not be discarded lightly.” Over all these latter passages in her sister’s letter Angela’s eye ran with a scornful carelessness. Her womanly pride revolted at such petty schooling—that she should be bidden to accept this young man gratefully, because he was her only suitor. No one else had ever cared for her pale insignificance. She looked at her clouded image in the oblong glass that hung on the panel above her secrétaire, and whose reflection made any idea of her own looks rather speculative than precise. It showed her a thoughtful face, too pale for beauty; yet she could but note the harmony of lines which recalled that Venetian type familiar to her eye in the Titians and Tintorets at Fareham House. “I doubt I am good-looking enough for any one to be satisfied with the outward semblance who valued the soul within,” she thought, as she turned from the glass with a mournful sigh. It was not of Denzil she was thinking, but of that other who in slow contemplative days in the library where he had taught her what books she ought to love, and where she might never more enter, must naturally sometimes remember her, and cast some backward thoughts to the hours they had spent together. Hyacinth’s letter of matronly counsel was but a week old when Sir John surprised his daughter one morning, as they sat at table, by the announcement of a visitor to stay in the house. “You will order the west room to be got ready, Angela, and bid Marjory Cook serve us some of her savourest dishes while Sir Denzil stays here.” “Sir Denzil!”