Her favourite among the children is a boy, George, still in the schoolroom.

The boy grows apace; goes to boarding-school and college; and is on the point of entering the army, when he discovers that he is madly in love with the lady, still an inmate of the house, who had "mothered him" when a child.

No ages are mentioned, but we may infer that the young man is then about two and twenty, and the lady something short of forty.

The position is not unimaginable, though it may be uncommon.

The idea of marrying one who had been to her as a favourite child, seems to the widow in the first instance repulsive and almost criminal.