"I don't mean that he was not in earnest." The widow was still smiling at me across her teacup. "But he must have been terribly deficient in tact. You were in the dullest of country places; you saw nobody, and went nowhere. Under such circumstances, I don't see how any decent man could have failed to win you. My brother used to be rather fastidious about curates, so I suppose your admirer was presentable." "Decidedly presentable and good-looking; but I got tired of him and his face." "What was the matter with his face?" "Nothing; but it was a face that had no story in it." Lady Waterville held out her cup for more cream, and then looked at me with a slight shake of the head. "I know you now," she said. "Louie, you are just the kind of girl who will marry badly or not marry at all." I laughed gaily. "What an awful prophecy, Lady Waterville!" I cried. "Do you know what it is that writes the story on a man's face?" she went on. "I will tell you—folly, extravagance, sin, and bitter repentance." I grew graver as I listened. Was she thinking of the very face that I was silently picturing at that moment? Despite her laziness, Lady Waterville possessed the faculty of observation; perhaps she saw all the more of life because she was wholly unoccupied. Her eyes were always at liberty; never being bent on crewelwork or patchwork, they studied human countenances in a leisurely fashion, and it is possible that they discovered a good many little secrets. I felt my cheeks beginning to burn. "Give me another cup of tea, my dear," she said, speaking in quite a different tone. "The last was not sweet enough. How well those buttercups suit you!" I had fastened a cluster of large water-buttercups into my bodice, and I thoroughly appreciated the widow's kindness in looking at them, and taking no notice of my blushes. She was talking on in a pleasant, rambling way, and I was gradually getting cool again, when the page threw open the door and announced Mr. Greystock. William Greystock came in, dark, bland, inscrutable as he always was. He had black eyes, deep-set, and black hair, closely cropped, that lay in thick ripples over his head. As he wore no moustache, there was nothing to veil the hard outline of his thin lips and prominent chin; and I thought then (as I think now) that his was the strongest and most cruel profile I had ever seen in all my life. He talked well and fluently; admired Lady Waterville's flowers, and even deigned to praise my humble buttercups. I told him that I had bought them of a little girl in the street, just because they reminded me of my old home; and then he asked me if I had not lately written some verses about the country. My cheeks grew hot again. Lady Waterville looked with an amused glance from William Greystock's face to mine. "I did not know that Miss Coverdale ever wrote poetry," she said to him. "Pray, how did you find it out?"