'How old is he?'

'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, I
think.'

Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she
did not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, she was
entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspect
that last love may be stronger than first love; and she would soon, alas,
enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the vainer ones of
her sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise than with their
backs to the window or the blinds half down. She reflected on Mrs.
Hooper's remark, and said no more about age.

Just then a telegram was brought up. It came from her husband, who had
gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the yacht,
and would not be able to get back till next day.

After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children till
dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a serene
sense of something ecstatic to come. For, with the subtle luxuriousness
of fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on learning that her
husband was to be absent that night she had refrained from incontinently
rushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame, preferring to reserve the
inspection till she could be alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted
to the occasion by silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than
was afforded by the garish afternoon sunlight.

The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it was