entered the presence of these ladies, whose names and circumstances had been so familiar to him for years.  Henrietta proved to be very unlike the image he had formed of her.  Anticipating weakness, conventionality, and some affectation, he was surprised to meet a lady of simple, grave manners; nervous at first, but soon perfectly self-possessed; by no means talkative, but manifesting in every word a well-informed mind and a habit of reflection.  It astonished him that such a man as Cecil Morphew should have discovered his ideal in Henrietta Winter; it perplexed him yet more that Cecil’s attachment should have been reciprocated.

Mrs. Winter was a very ordinary person; rather pretentious, rather too fluent of speech, inclined to fretfulness, and probably of trying temper.  Having for many years lived much beyond his means (in the manner so often described by Morphew), Mr. Winter had left his family as good as unprovided for.  There was money to be divided between mother and daughter, but so small a sum that it could not be regarded as a source of income.  To the widow was bequeathed furniture; to Henrietta, a library of two thousand volumes; finally, the testator directed that the sum of five hundred pounds should be spent on a window of stained glass (concerning which full particulars were given), to be set up, in memory of himself, in the church he had been wont to honour with his pious attendance.  This item of her husband’s will had so embittered Mrs Winter, that she hardly ever spoke of him; if obliged to do so, it was with cold severity that she uttered his name.  Immediately, she withdrew all opposition to Henrietta’s marriage with the man she had considered so objectionable; she would not have been sorry had her daughter chosen to be married with the least possible delay.  As for the future, of course she must live in her daughter’s house; together, they must make what they could of their small capital, and hope that Cecil’s business would prosper.

Harvey had been acquainted with these facts since Mr. Winter’s death.  Bearing them in mind as he talked with Henrietta, and exerting his powers of observation to the utmost, he still found himself as far as ever from a definite opinion as to the wisdom of the coming marriage.  That Mrs. Winter would be a great obstacle to happiness admitted of no doubt; but Henrietta herself might or might not prove equal to the change of circumstances.  Evidently one of her characteristics was an extreme conscientiousness; it explained, perhaps, her long inability to decide between the claims of parents and lover.  Her tastes in literature threw some light upon the troubles which had beset her; she was a student of George Eliot, and spoke of the ethical problems with which that author is mainly concerned, in a way suggestive of self-revelation.  Conversing for the first time with Morphew’s friend, and finding him sufficiently intelligent, she might desire to offer some indirect explanation of the course she had followed.  Harvey