without her glitter of diamonds and splendour of apparel was scarcely
Beauty for him. He waited for the groom of the chambers to announce her
name, and the low hum of well-bred approval to accompany her entrance,
before he bowed the knee and acknowledged her perfection. The Beauties
whom he remembered had received their patent from the Prince Regent,
and had graduated in the houses of Devonshire and Hertford. How should
the faded bachelor know that this girl, in a shabby cotton gown, with
unkempt hair dragged off her pale face, and with grimy smears from the
handles of saucepans and fire-irons imprinted upon her cheeks--how
should he know that she was beautiful? It was only during the slow
monotonous hours of his convalescence, when he lay upon the poor faded
little sofa in Mrs. Kepp's parlour--the sofa that was scarcely less
faded and feeble than himself--it was then, and then only, that he
discovered the loveliness of the face which had been so often bent over
him during his delirious wanderings.

"I have mistaken you for all manner of people, my dear," he said to his
landlady's daughter, who sat by the little Pembroke-table working,
while her mother dozed in a corner with a worsted stocking drawn over
her arm and a pair of spectacles resting upon her elderly nose. Mrs.
Kepp and her daughter were wont to spend their evenings in the lodger's
apartment now; for the invalid complained bitterly of "the horrors"
when they left him.

"I have taken you for all sorts of people, Mary Anne," pursued the
Captain dreamily. "Sometimes I have fancied you were the Countess of
Jersey, and I could see her smile as she looked at me when I was first
presented to her. I was very young in the beautiful Jersey's time; and
then there was the other one--whom I used to drink tea with at
Brighton. Ah me! what a dull world it seems nowadays! The King gone,