Sir Jasper was a personable man, and had not yet topped thirty-five; a very prime age for a bridegroom with the greenness of youth cast off, the tedium of maturity not yet as much as dawned. With your man of thirty-five it is a point of honour to be as ready with the generosity of youth as the lad of twenty, especially should his fancy turn to sweet seventeen. He will have gained, however, a vast experience, and, unless he be a fool, a seasoned judgment. Sir Jasper was no fool; and though he had so far justified my Lady Kilcroney’s prognostications as to be more conspicuous at any dashing sport-meeting than ever before, he kept chiefly in the company of his own sex, and never so much as noticed the passage of the most flouncing petticoat; and who was more likely to know than Kitty, since she was the only lady in the world whose society the widower now frequented? At first the talk would be all of his Julia; but in a little while lamentations gave way to more cheerful discourse anent the young family. It was in her capacity of godmother to little Kate Standish that, a due interval having elapsed since the loss of their ever-to-be-regretted Julia, Kitty Kilcroney first addressed Sir Jasper on the subject of a second marriage. She was, of course, quite prepared for the shocked refusal which met her. Was it possible my Lady Kilcroney should not be aware of the solemn vow, by which he had pledged himself to his Dying Treasure, to remain ever faithful to her memory? My Lady Kilcroney was very well aware of it. Heaven knew, she exclaimed, rolling her pansy eyes towards the ceiling of her drawing-room--she was for the while free of her Court duties, and was established in the Hertford Street mansion--Heaven knew, if ever there was anyone in the world who could appreciate what a second marriage meant to a true mourner it was she! When Bellairs went--“Ah, you never knew my first, Sir Jasper! The most excellent, the most estimable, the most generous and noble-minded of men. There was not a condition in his will, I do assure you! Everything, everything left to me! ‘_My dearest wife, Kitty, in token of the perfect happiness she gave me._’ Those were his words, Sir Jasper. But a year’s happiness, alas! and he, poor seraph, scarce able to endure anyone in the room with him with the gout so cruel settled in his joints that, if you’ll believe me, his feet were like nothing so much as warming-pans, and his hands--my poor Bellairs’ hands, why, there were days when he could not have borne that a butterfly should settle on them! When my cherished martyr was released from his sufferings, did I not, like you, vow in my heart that I never, never would replace him?” Here Kitty fixed her eyes upon Sir Jasper’s lugubrious countenance, and, positively, though her tone was filled with such pious melancholy, they twinkled.