“We have not exactly fixed. In fact, my dear Sir Ralph, Miss Vyse is a young lady of such exceedingly delicate feeling—I had wished her to name an early day, but she rather objects to our marriage taking place till the anniversary of the late Mrs. Chepstow’s death has passed. “Oh indeed!” said the younger man; “then that anniversary falls about this season, I suppose. Ah well, a few weeks’ delay will give you time to know each other better! I forget by-the-bye how many years you have been a widower.” Mr. Chepstow looked still more uncomfortable. “My late wife, Mrs. Chepstow,” he said, “died in June. I thought I mentioned that Miss Vyse wished to postpone matters till after the anniversary was passed.” “Your late wife only died last June then?” exclaimed Sir Ralph, feeling considerably disgusted. “Then I certainly agree with Miss Vyse as to the propriety of deferring the present affair a little longer.” This was rather a damper even to the obtuse Mr. Chepstow. He looked rather ashamed of himself, and appeared glad to agree to his host’s proposal that they should return to the drawing-room. “I wonder what sort of a person the first Mrs Chepstow was?” thought Ralph somewhat cynically, as he observed the devotion of the fat lover, the cool affectation and airs de grande dame of the beautiful fiancée. It was amusing to watch the change in her manner already. She had altogether thrown aside her gentle deference and fawning amiability, and seemed to go out of her way to seek for opportunities of covertly sneering at Sir Ralph, or annoying him with ingeniously impertinent innuendoes, and his real, unaffected indifference to it all galled her not a little. “How can it be,” thought he, “that two women can exist, so utterly, so radically different as this girl and my Marion?” And as the thought passed through his mind, he glanced at Florence. She was looking at him, with a strangely mingled expression on her face. Regret, remorse, even a shade of pity, seemed to cross her beautiful features. But for a moment, and then she hastily turned aside and began chattering nonsense to Mr. Chepstow. But a new direction had been given to Ralph’s mediations. “Why does she look at me in that way?” he asked himself: “she has doubtless discovered my secret. Can it be that after all she is possessed of something in the shape of a heart that is capable of pitying my bitter disappointment? It is possible, I suppose. Moralists say there is a spark of good in the worst of us.” Florence, by-the-bye, scolded Mr. Chepstow furiously when she discovered that he had confessed to Sir Ralph that the first anniversary of her predecessor’s death was not yet past!