To one who knows her age, as we do--she is fifty-three--she looks like an old woman who has found out the secret of perpetual youth, but has kept it for her own use, as, in such a case, every woman probably would do.

There is only one piece of deception in her appearance; her black hair, which clusters over her forehead like a girl's, is dyed of that color: it is in reality as white as snow.

By lamp-light, as you see her now, she might be a woman of five-and-twenty, penning a letter to her love.

But she is, in fact, writing to her son; for it is Mrs.Yorke.Writing to him, but not thinking of him, surely, when she frowns as now, and leans back in her chair with that menacing and angry look.

No; her anger is not directed against _him_, although he has left her and home, long since, upon an adventure of which she disapproved.
"You will gain nothing for yourself, Richard," was her warning; "and, perhaps, may wreck even _my_ scanty fortunes." But, as we know, her son had taken his own way (as he was wont to do), and had so far prospered.
She was writing a reply to the letter she had received from him from Crompton that very morning, and the task was one that naturally evoked some bitter memories.
"So he put him in the ebony chamber, did he ?" they ran on.