"Ill?--oh, how sad! What a world of trouble we live in! Ill?--and so young--so hand----. Excuse me, I meant not to flatter you, but I have seen so much sorrow myself. I am only twenty-two, and I've been a wid--wid--wid--ow over a year." She wiped away a tear with handkerchief No. 2, and smiled sadly in my face. "Sorrow has aged her," I thought, for, although the blind was down, she looked to me nearer thirty than twenty-two. Still, she was pretty, with dark eyes that looked into yours in a wonderfully confiding way--melting, liquid, deep eyes, that even a man who is perfectly self-possessed can not see to the bottom of soon enough for his own good. As for me, those eyes confused while they pleased me. The widow never noticed my embarrassment; but, the ice once broken, talked on and on. She gave me, in soft, sweet, broken accents, her history--how she had been her mother's only pet, and had married a rich Chicago broker, who had died in less than two years, leaving her alone--all alone--with plenty of money, plenty of jewelry, a fine house, but alas, "no one to love her, none to caress," as the song says, and the world a desert. "But I can still love _a friend_," she added, with a melancholy smile. "One as disinterested, as ignorant of the world as you, would please me best. You must stop in Chicago," she said, giving me her card before we parted. "Every traveler should spend a few days in our wonderful city. Call on me, and I will have up my carriage and take you out to see the sights."