The sun had begun to sink, before, starting up from her long and agitated musing, the womanish idea struck her of making some preparations for his reception, arranging her poor room and her person to make as favourable an impression as possible upon the young prince who was her own child. What was she to do? She had been a gentleman’s wife once, though for so short a time; and sometimes of late this recollection had come strongly to her mind, with a sensation of curious pride which was new to her. Now she made an effort to recall that strange chapter in her life, when she had lived among beautiful things, and worn beautiful dresses, and might have learned what gentlemen like. She had never seen Val sufficiently near to distinguish his features; and oddly enough, ignoring the likeness of her husband which was in Dick, she expected to find in Valentine another Richard, and instinctively concluded that his tastes must be what his father’s were. After a short pause of consideration, she went to a trunk, which she had lately sent for to the vagrant headquarters, where it had been kept for her for years--a trunk containing some relics of that departed life in which she had been “a lady.” Out of this she took a little shawl embroidered in silken garlands, and which had faded into colours even more tasteful and sweet than they were in their newest glories--a shawl for which Mr Grinder, or any other _dilettante_ in Eton, would have given her almost anything she liked to ask. This she threw over a rough table of Dick’s making, and placed on it some flowers in a homely little vase of coarse material yet graceful shape. Here, too, she placed a book or two drawn from the same repository of treasures--books in rich faded binding, chiefly poetry, which Richard had given her in his early folly. The small table with its rich cover, its bright flowers and gilded books, looked like a little altar of fancy and grace in the bare room; it was indeed an altar dedicated to the memory of the past, to the pleasure of the unknown.