She was mistaken, however. But her beauty was not of a kind to be materially affected by such causes, and in this respect rose far superior to the more striking, but merely physical, loveliness of such women as Florence Vyse. The “sweet soul” that looked out of Marion Vere’s grey eyes would render them beautiful till old age; the delicate features and sensitive mouth drew their chief attraction from the truth of heart and refinement of mind of their owner. To my mind she was at all times a beautiful woman. Her nature, in spite of adverse circumstances, was sound and healthy, and in a sense, even strong; for after all it is the strongest who suffer the most, that bend only, where weaker ones would break. As Geoffrey Baldwin handed her on to the little platform at Mallingford station, whither he had driven to meet her, he, at least, would have agreed with me. Likely enough, he would have been at a loss to define his sensations with regard to her. He was not a man who troubled himself much with definitions of any kind certainly, but it is curious to reflect on the peculiar attraction this girl had for him from the first. He had seen plenty of far handsomer women, he had known some few as sweet and good. Intellect he did not care for, did not understand. Yet as he looked at the slight figure in its heavy mourning dress, at the fair face and sad, gentle eyes that glanced up at him with their indescribable expression or mingled womanliness and childlike appeal, there came over his honest manhood the same yearning instinct of love and protection, the same wild longing to fold her then and there in his arms, which, before now, had stirred the innermost depths of Ralph Severn’s heart, had indeed cost him no slight struggle to resist. I make, no secret of it at all. Both these men fell love with her, as it is called, almost from the first. It was very strange. They were so utterly different, alike only in that they were brave and good and true. But as to tastes, shades of character, habits, ideas—all in short that goes to the formation of individuality, you might search high and low, far and wide, before you could find two men so radically dissimilar as the quiet, studious Sir Ralph Severn, and the high-spirited, open-hearted, life enjoying farmer, Geoffrey Baldwin. Marion felt glad that her young guardian had come to meet her, and she told him so. “It seems less desolate,” she said, “for I do not expect much of a welcome from Aunt Tremlett.” Which expectation, for all his wish to cheer her, Mr. Baldwin could not find it in his conscience to disagree with.