"Yes," said Henrietta, "I can quite see that; it is not gracefulness,
and it is not beauty, nor is it what she ever thinks of, but there is
something distinguished about her. I should look twice at her if I met
her in the street, and expect her to get into a carriage with a
coronet. And then and there they fell in love, did they?"

"In long morning expeditions with the ostensible purpose of sketching,
but in which I had all the drawing to myself, while the others talked
either wondrous wisely or wondrous drolly. However, you must not
suppose that anything of the novel kind was said then; Geoffrey was
only twenty, and Beatrice seemed as much out of his reach as the king's
daughter of Hongarie."

"O yes, of course," said Henrietta, "but that only makes it more
delightful! Only to think of Uncle and Aunt Geoffrey having a novel in
their history."

"That there are better novels in real life than in stories, is a truth
or a truism often repeated, Henrietta," said her mother with a soft
sigh, which she repressed in an instant, and proceeded: "Poor Frank's
illness and death at Oxford brought them together the next year in a
very different manner. Geoffrey was one of his chief nurses to the
last, and was a great comfort to them all; you may suppose how grateful
they were to him. Next time I saw him, he seemed quite to have buried
his youthful spirits in his studies: he was reading morning, noon, and
night, and looking ill and overworked."

"O, Uncle Geoffrey! dear good Uncle Geoffrey," cried Henrietta, in an
ecstasy; "you were as delightful as a knight of old, only as you could
not fight tournaments for her, you were obliged to read for her; and