The door opened softly, and a lady past middle age, entered; and, approaching Harley, as he still stood musing by the window, laid her hand on his shoulder. What character there is in a hand! Hers was a hand that Titian would have painted with elaborate care! Thin, white, and delicate--with the blue veins raised from the surface. Yet there was something more than mere patrician elegance in the form and texture. A true physiologist would have said at once, "there are intellect and pride in that hand, which seems to fix a hold where it rests; and, lying so lightly, yet will not be as lightly shaken off." "Harley," said the lady--and Harley turned--"you do not deceive me by that smile," she continued sadly; "you were not smiling when I entered." "It is rarely that we smile to ourselves, my dear mother; and I have done nothing lately so foolish as to cause me to smile _at_ myself." "My son," said Lady Lansmere, somewhat abruptly, but with great earnestness, "you come from a line of illustrious ancestors; and methinks they ask from their tombs why the last of their race has no aim and no object--no interest--no home in the land which they served, and which rewarded them with its honors." "Mother," said the soldier simply, "when the land was in danger I served it as my forefathers served--and my answer would be the scars on my breast." "Is it only in danger that a country is served--only in war that duty is fulfilled? Do you think that your father, in his plain manly life of country gentleman, does not fulfil, though obscurely, the objects for which aristocracy is created and wealth is bestowed?" "Doubtless he does, ma'am--and better than his vagrant son ever can." "Yet his vagrant son has received such gifts from nature--his youth was so rich in promise--his boyhood so glowed at the dream of glory?--" "Ay," said Harley very softly, "it is possible--and all to be buried in a single grave!" The Countess started, and withdrew her hand from Harley's shoulder. Lady Lansmere's countenance was not one that much varied in expression. She had in this, as in her cast of feature, little resemblance to her son. Her features were slightly aquiline--the eyebrows of that arch which gives a certain majesty to the aspect: the lines round the mouth were habitually rigid and compressed. Her face was that of one who had gone through great emotion and subdued it. There was something formal, and even ascetic, in the character of her beauty, which was still considerable;--in her air and in her dress. She might have suggested to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine, half abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the light world round her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman who has known human ties and human affections. And now, as she gazed long on Harley's quiet, saddened brow, it was the face of a mother.