"Your wife," returned the general, looking at the sheen of the golden hair and the shining dress, "is pretty, graceful, and amiable, but that girl has all the soul; there is as much difference between them as between a golden buttercup and a dark, stately, queenly rose. The rose should have been ruler at Darrell Court, old friend." Then he asked, abruptly: "What are you going to do for her, Sir Oswald?" "I have provided for her," he replied. "Darrell Court, then, and all its rich revenues go to your wife, I presume?" "Yes, to my wife," said Sir Oswald. "Unconditionally?" asked the general. "Most certainly," was the impatient reply. "Well, my friend," said the general, "in this world every one does as he or she likes; but to disinherit that girl, with the face and spirit of a true Darrell, and to put a fair, amiable blonde stranger in her place, was, to say the least, eccentric--the world will deem it so, at any rate. If I were forty years younger I would win Pauline Darrell, and make her love me. But we must join the ladies--they will think us very remiss." "Sweet smiles, no mind, an amiable manner, no intellect, prettiness after the fashion of a Parisian doll, to be preferred to that noble, truthful, queenly girl! Verily tastes differ," thought the general, as he watched the two, contrasted them, and lost himself in wonder over his friend's folly. He took his leave soon afterward, gravely musing on what he could not understand--why his old friend had done what seemed to him a rash, ill-judged deed. He left Sir Oswald in a state of great discomfort. Of course he loved his wife--loved her with a blind infatuation that did more honor to his heart than his head--but he had always relied so implicitly on the general's judgment. He found himself half wishing that in this, the crowning action of his life, he had consulted his old friend. He never knew how that clever woman of the world, Lady Hampton, had secretly influenced him. He believed that he had acted entirely on his own clear judgment; and now, for the first time, he doubted that. "You look anxious, Oswald," said Lady Darrell, as she bent down and with her fresh, sweet young lips touched his brow. "Has anything troubled you?" "No, my darling," he replied; "I do not feel quite well, though. I have had a dull, nervous heaviness about me all day--a strange sensation of pain too. I shall be better to-morrow." "If not," she said, sweetly, "I shall insist on your seeing Doctor Helmstone. I am quite uneasy about you." "You are very kind to me," he responded, gratefully. But all her uneasiness did not prevent her drawing the white lace round her graceful shoulders and taking up the third volume of a novel in which she was deeply interested, while Sir Oswald, looking older and grayer than he had looked before, went into the garden for a stroll.