Fire again flashed from the eyes of the young man as he thought on Alphingham, but for her sake he restrained himself, and endeavoured by a few soothing words to calm her.
"Tell me all--all you know, I can bear it," she said at length, almost inaudibly, and looking up with features as deathlike as before.

Percy complied with her request, and briefly related as follows: He had become acquainted during his college life, he told her, with a widow and her daughter, who lived about four or five miles from Oxford.
Some service he had rendered them, of sufficient importance as to make him an ever welcome and acceptable guest within the precincts of that cottage, which proclaimed a refined and elevated taste, although its inmates were not of the highest class.

Both Percy fancied were widows, although he scarcely knew the foundation of that fancy, except the circumstance of their living together, and the husband of the younger lady never appearing; nor was his name ever mentioned in the confidential conversations he sometimes had with them, which the service he had had in his power to do demanded.

Mrs.Amesfort, the daughter, still possessed great beauty, which a shade of pensive thought, sometimes amounting to deep melancholy, rendered even more lovely.

Her age might have been six or seven and twenty, she could not have been more.