of some minor graces of life for which they had the instincts, but on which they had lacked instruction; and who, still more important, at least for Henry, was to be their first fragile link with certain strenuous new northern writers, translations of whom in every tongue had just then descended, Gothlike, upon Europe, to the great energising of its various literatures.  She it was too who first handed them the fretted golden key to the enchanted garden of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the striking head of the young Dante in sepia, which had hung in a sort of shrine-recess in Henry’s study, had been copied for him from Rossetti’s sketch by Myrtilla’s own hand.

She had, too, one of the most precious gifts for friendship, the gift of unselfish and diligent and progressive appreciation of all a friend’s good points.  She never flattered; but she never missed the smallest opportunity for praise.  She was one of those rare people who make you feel happy in yourself, who send you away somehow dignified, profitably raised in your own esteem; just as others have a mysterious power of dejecting you in your proudest moments.  If you had any charm, however shy, Myrtilla Williamson would find it, and send you away with a great gush of gratitude to her because it had been found at last.  This was perhaps the greatest charm of her clever letters; they were all about “you,”—­not, of course, that you didn’t want to hear about her.  But frequently all she told you of herself was her name.  Perhaps she would write in the half-hour that remained between, say, a visit from Esther and the arrival of Williamson, to fix in a few intimate vivid words the charm of their afternoon together, and tell Esther in some new gratifying way what she was to her and why and how she was it; or when Henry had been there—­even more carefully in the absence of Williamson—­to read her his new poem, she would write him a long letter of literary criticism, just perceptibly vibrating with the emotion she might have felt for the romantic young poet, whom she allowed to call himself her “cavaliere servente,” had she not been Williamson as well as Myrtilla, and had she not, as she somewhat unscientifically declared, been old enough to be his mother.

“Well,” she said, as they sipped their tea, “so Henry’s really gone.  He slipped round to bid me a sort of good-bye yesterday, and told me the whole story.  On the whole, I’m glad, though I know how you’ll miss each other.  But I’m sorriest for your mother.  Yes, yes, I’m sorry for her.  You must try to make it up to her, dear child.  I think just that, above all things, would make me fear to be a mother.  One can do without children,” and there was a certain implication in the conversational atmosphere that children of the name of Williamson had been mercifully spared the world; “but when once they have come into one’s life, it must be terrible to see them go out again.  I should like to come round and have a little talk with your mother.  I wonder if she’d care to see me?”