truth one whose peculiar loveliness of countenance well deserved the
admiration expressed by her son. It was indeed pale and thin, but the
features were beautifully formed, and had that expression of sweet
placid resignation which would have made a far plainer face beautiful.
The eyes were deep dark blue, and though sorrow and suffering had
dimmed their brightness, their softness was increased; the smile was
one of peace, of love, of serenity; of one who, though sorrow-stricken,
as it were, before her time, had lived on in meek patience and
submission, almost a child in her ways, as devoted to her mother, as
little with a will and way of her own, as free from the cares of this
work-a-day world. The long luxuriant dark brown hair, which once, as
now with Henrietta, had clustered in thick glossy ringlets over her
comb and round her face, was in thick braids beneath the delicate lace
cap which suited with her plain black silk dress. Her figure was
slender, so tall that neither her well-grown son nor daughter had yet
reached her height, and, as Frederick said, with something queenlike in
its unconscious grace and dignity.

As a girl she had been the merriest of the merry, and even now she had
great playfulness of manner, and threw herself into the occupation of
the moment with a life and animation that gave an uncommon charm to her
manners, so that how completely sorrow had depressed and broken her
spirit would scarcely have been guessed by one who had not known her in
earlier days.

Frederick's account of his journey and of his school news was heard and
commented on, a work of time extending far into the dinner; the next
matter in the regular course of conversation on the day of arrival was
to talk over Uncle and Aunt Geoffrey's proceedings, and the Knight
Sutton affairs.