"We will make up a party," said Richard, "and come down once a week to look at you. Planefield would enjoy it, I am sure." "Thank you," said Bertha. "And I will always bring out the work-basket, with a lace-collar for Meg in it. Lace-collars are more becoming than small aprons or stocking-mending. Do you remember the little shirt Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was making for her boy, and which was always produced when she was in virtuous company? Poor Rawdon was quite a big boy, and very much too large for it, by the time it was finished. I wonder if Meg will be grown up before she gets her collar." She produced a needle, threaded it, and took a few stitches, bending her head over her task with a serious air. "Does it look as if I had done it before?" she said. "I hope it does. I really have, you know. Once I sewed on a button for Richard." But she did not sew many minutes. Soon she laid her work down in the basket. "There!" she said, "that is enough! I have made my impression, and that is all I care for--or I _should_ have made my impression if you had been strangers. If you had not known me you would have had time to say to one another: 'What a simple, affectionate little creature she must be! After all, there is nothing which becomes a woman so well as to sit at her work in that quiet, natural way, with her children about her!' Come, Jack and Janey, it is time for you to say good-night, and let me make a pretty exit with you, in my mob-cap and apron." She took them away, and remained upstairs with them until they were in bed. When she came back she did not bring the work-basket, but she had not taken off the cap and handkerchief. She held an open letter in her hand, and went to Richard and sat down by him. Her manner had changed again entirely. It was as if she had left upstairs something more than the work-basket. "Richard," she said, "I did not tell you I had had a letter from Agnes Sylvestre." "From Agnes Sylvestre!" he exclaimed. "Why, no, you didn't! But it is good news. Laurence, you must remember Agnes Sylvestre!" "Perfectly," was the answer. "She was not the kind of person you forget." "She was a beautiful creature," said Richard, "and I always regretted that we lost sight of her as we did after her marriage. Where is she now, Bertha?" "When she wrote she was at Castellamare. She went abroad, you know, immediately after her husband's death." "He was not the nicest fellow in the world,--that Sylvestre," said Richard. "He was not the man for a woman like that to marry. I wonder if she did not find out that she had made a mistake?" "If she did," said Bertha, "she bore it very well, and it has been all over for more than two years." She turned suddenly to Tredennis. "Did not you once tell me"--she began. "Yes," he replied. "I met her in Chicago, and Mr. Sylvestre was with her."