"It is a very bad plan," she said quietly, "to put your own imaginings into your anticipations of another person's feelings towards or about you. Nothing is more misleading--it blocks the way to any sympathy between you. I know Regina Bretton very well, otherwise I would not have accepted her proposal. She is the sort of woman who will enjoy your inexperience, as well as"--mother went on, with a little mischief in her tone--"smartening you up generally. She loves being appealed to; then, too, she is your godmother, and _really_ thoroughly kind-hearted." The remembrance of this and other reassuring remarks of a similar kind did comfort me a little. Still more so the sight of my godmother's kind, handsome face when I saw her for the first time coming downstairs to receive me on the afternoon of my arrival at her house. Nothing could have been more affectionate or _un_-alarming than her manner of welcome. "I would have gone to the station to meet you," she said, "but it is often more embarrassing than pleasant, when people are not quite sure of each other by sight. Then I knew, too, that you had your maid with you, and indeed, dear, as regards actual travelling, you are far more experienced than I; you have had so much of it." Trifling as was this remark, it helped to put me at my ease; it showed a wish on my hostess's part to say something pleasant and gratifying. Surely it would be well if there were a little more of this sort of thing among us English people? As a rule, we are so terribly afraid of agreeable impulses, reserving all approach to commendation or admiration till absolutely sure of good grounds for such. Yet the same caution does not hold on the converse side. An air of cold criticism, in itself more discouraging very often than an openly disagreeable remark, is as a rule accepted as correct. May it not be that in this particular people deceive themselves, and at the root of our unattractive reserve and so-called terror of flattering, there often lurks an underlying spirit of reluctance to discern or allow, even to ourselves, the best points of another? Still worse, not impossibly, in many instances some more or less specious touch of jealousy? I have wandered a little from the case in point, which is scarcely a typical one. On my kind cousin's part there could have been no conceivable temptation to disparagement of me in any way. Not even of my youth, for its benefits were still practically hers. She had magnificent health, was still as pretty as she had ever been--some indeed said prettier; she was surrounded by friends, many of whom at least--most, let us hope--were attached to her by reason of her own unspoilt, unselfish character, far more than by that of her prosperous and important position. There was but one blank page in her life. She had no children of her own, though the devotion of the best of husbands, as was hers, scarcely allowed her to realise this one great want.