freedom, and her independence, and her children. Alas! yes; in her independence and freedom. She liked that, though many a reader will think the worse of her for liking it. But it is not as a perfect creature she is here introduced, but as a woman with faults like others. Everybody knew that she had been very fond of poor Severn, and had stood by him faithful and tender till his last breath; and that she was very desolate when he was gone, and cried out even against God and His providence a little in her anguish and solitude--but pondered and was silent, and pondered and was cheerful--and, at last, things being as they were, got to be glad that she was free and could work for herself. And she was comparatively young, and had plenty to do, and there were her children. A woman cannot go on being heart-broken with such props as these. And it pleased her, we avow, since she could not help it, to have her own way. It was her husband who had called her padrona caressingly to everybody when they came back from Italy--the ‘missis,’ as he would explain--and what had been a joke at first had become the tenderest of titles now. Those only who had been Severn’s friends dared continue to address her by that name, and Laurie was one of them, young though he was. When she said ‘Come in,’ he opened the door softly. She was standing by her easel, hastily finishing something with the little light that remained. ‘Don’t disturb me, please, for five minutes,’ she said, without looking round, ‘whoever you are. I must not lose this last little bit of light.’ ‘Don’t hurry,’ said Laurie, sitting down behind her in a Louis Quinze fauteuil, which had figured in many pictures.