Mrs. Champernowne smiled her sweetest smile as she gave her hand to William Crawford. She was not a vivacious enchantress. Her feminine detractors had been heard to wonder what gentlemen could see in Mrs. Champernowne, who had really no animation, and gave herself the languid airs and graces of a person who was in the last stage of consumption. But the devotees who worshipped at the Hermitage found a charm in the widow's repose of manner which infinitely surpassed the frisky fascinations of livelier belles. The touch of her soft cool hand had a kind of mesmeric influence. The harmonious tones of her low voice were like the dropping of water in some sylvan fountain. She excelled rather as a sympathetic listener than as a brilliant talker; but as she talked little, and never talked at random, she had a reputation for sound judgment and refined taste rarely accorded to a brilliant talker. For her adorers she was always charming; and though she was alike to all, there was so subtle a fascination in her manner, that there was scarcely one among her band of worshippers who did not fondly cherish the delusion that he was the most favoured, and that there were specially melodious accents and particularly delicious smiles reserved for him alone. Accustomed, in the ten years of her wifehood, to study the whims and gratify the peevish fancies of an elderly invalid, Mrs. Champernowne had acquired the power of pleasing people who were hard to please. Never since she had reigned in her little world had she wounded the self-love of one of her subjects. People left her presence delighted with themselves, as well as charmed with her, and eagerly returned to renew the impressions that were only to be experienced in her society. "I thought you were never coming to see me again," she said, as the painter seated himself opposite to her; "and yet you must know how anxious I always am to hear about your new pictures, and to see you," she added, in a softer voice; and then there was a pause, during which one of the Angora cats had crept to her knee to be caressed. There were disappointed worshippers at the Hermitage, who, in the peevishness of despair, declared that Mrs. Champernowne cherished her Angora cats with a view to the aggravation of mankind; and that she knew she never looked prettier than when one of her favourites was perched upon her shoulder, making itself into a fleecy-white background for the jet blackness of her shining hair and the pale olive of her complexion.