As he sat near her, in his plain black morning attire, courteous, genuinely sweet-tempered, his good looks conspicuous, a smile on his delicate, refined, but vacillating lips, and his honest dark-blue eyes bent upon her in kindness, Maude for the first time admitted a vision of the possible future, together with a dim consciousness that it might not be intolerable.

Half the world, of her age and sex, would have deemed it indeed a triumph to be made the wife of that attractive man.
He had cautiously stood aside for Lady Kirton to take the head of the table; but the dowager had positively refused, and subsided into the chair at the foot.

She did not fill it in dear Edward's time, she said; neither should she in dear Val's; he had come home to occupy his own place.

And oh, thank goodness he was come! She and Maude had been so lonely and miserable, growing thinner daily from sheer _ennui_.

So she faced Lord Hartledon at the end of the table, her flaxen curls surmounted by an array of black plumes, and looking very like a substantial female mute.
"What an awful thing that is about the Rectory!" exclaimed she, when they were more than half through dinner.
Lord Hartledon looked up quietly.