Before the thought took shape she had read it, and with the smile which drew such sad lines about her mouth, had continued gaily: “What are you up to this evening, by the way? What do you say to going to the “Black Crook” with your cousin Hubert and one or two others? I have a box.” It was inevitable that, not long after this candid confession, I should have persuaded myself that a taste for reading was boring in a woman, and that one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s chief charms lay in her freedom from literary pretensions. The truth was, of course, that it lay in her sincerity; in her humble yet fearless estimate of her own qualities and short-comings. I had never met its like in a woman of any age, and coming to me in such early days, and clothed in such looks and intonations, it saved me, in after years, from all peril of meaner beauties. But before I had come to understand that, or to guess what falling in love with Lizzie Hazeldean was to do for me, I had quite unwittingly and fatuously done the falling. The affair turned out, in the perspective of the years, to be but an incident of our long friendship; and if I touch on it here it is only to illustrate another of my poor friend’s gifts. If she could not read books she could read hearts; and she bent a playful yet compassionate gaze on mine while it still floundered in unawareness. I remember it all as if it were yesterday. We were sitting alone in her drawing-room, in the winter twilight, over the fire. We had reached--in her company it was not difficult--the degree of fellowship when friendly talk lapses naturally into a friendlier silence, and she had taken up the evening paper while I glowered dumbly at the embers. One little foot, just emerging below her dress, swung, I remember, between me and the fire, and seemed to hold her all in the spring of its instep.... “Oh,” she exclaimed, “poor Henry Prest--“. She dropped the paper. “His wife is dead--poor fellow,” she said simply. The blood rushed to my forehead: my heart was in my throat. She had named him--named him at last, the recreant lover, the man who had “dishonoured” her! My hands were clenched: if he had entered the room they would have been at his throat.... And then, after a quick interval, I had again the humiliating disheartening sense of not understanding: of being too young, too inexperienced, to know. This woman, who spoke of her deceived husband with tenderness, spoke compassionately of her faithless lover! And she did the one as naturally as the other, not as if this impartial charity were an attitude she had determined to assume, but as if it were part of the lesson life had taught her. “I didn’t know he was married,” I growled between my teeth. She meditated absently. “Married? Oh, yes; when was it? The year after ...” her voice dropped again ... “after my husband died. He married a quiet cousin, who had always been in love with him, I believe. They had two boys.--You knew him?” she abruptly questioned.