She had been so much interested in Lord Stuart’s description of his sister that it did not seem strange to her that she thrilled and trembled when she stood at last in Lady Edith’s presence, and felt the touch of her soft, white hand, and heard her low, sweet voice speaking to her in the kindest accents, as if she quite understood the pretty girlish shyness of her guest. Thea gained courage from those gentle tones and looked up at Lady Edith. She saw a woman of medium height and size, exquisitely formed, and with such a lovely, pensive face that it seemed to beguile the young girl’s heart from her breast. Dark-blue eyes, shining chestnut braids, and delicate, high-bred features combined to make the young widow rarely lovely still, though past the prime of youth. Her dress was some soft shining arrangement of black and white, showing that she still wore mourning in a slight degree for her loved and lost. This lovely, winning woman welcomed Thea with a sweet cordiality that made them friends at once. When the husband and wife had gone to their rooms to dress for dinner, Lady Edith turned to her brother with tears in her lovely eyes. “How beautiful she is!” she cried. “I am in love with her already. Do you know, brother, that she reminds me strongly of my poor dead Arthur?” “Is it that?” he exclaimed. “Why, now I know what it is that drew me to Thea de Vere from the first. She has a look of poor Arthur.” “The same bright smile, and an indefinable something about her whole face and manner,” sighed Lady Edith. She remained quite silent a few moments, then murmured, in a musing tone: “My little darling, if she had lived, would have looked like this young girl--the same blue eyes and dazzling golden curls.” Meanwhile, Norman de Vere was saying to his fair young bride: “It will not be necessary, my darling, to confide to these English people the story of your past--that is, of the strange way in which you came into my guardianship.” “Oh, Norman, are you ashamed of the mystery that surrounds my birth?” she cried, startled. “Not in the least, my darling wife; but English people of rank lay so much stress upon birth and position, and it would seem strange to them that I could never trace your family. I have told our host that you were my ward from early childhood, and that is enough for any one to know,” said Norman, who had a pride equal to any one’s, only he did not realize it. Thea had just come in to him from the hands of her maid. She looked lovely in a dinner-dress of blue and white, with ornaments of pearl. “Sweetheart, how lovely you are, and how young and childish you appear by my side! I hope people will not begin to call you an old man’s darling,” Norman said, drawing her within the circle of his arm before the tall mirror and gazing critically upon the reflection therein--the handsome man in manhood’s early prime, and the lovely golden-haired girl whose head just reached his broad shoulder.