Six months after Florence Delmaine’s arrival, George Talbot had succumbed to a virulent fever; and his widow, upon whom a handsome jointure had been settled, when the funeral and the necessary law worries had come to an end, had intimated to her young cousin that she intended to travel for a year upon the Continent, and that she would be glad, that is—­with an elaborate sigh—­she would be a degree less miserable, if she, Florence, would accompany her.  This delighted Florence.  She was wearied with attendance on the sick, having done most of the nursing of the Hon. George, while his wife lamented and slept; and, besides, she was still sore at heart for the loss of her father.  The year abroad had passed swiftly; the end of it brought them to Paris once more, where, feeling that her time of mourning might be decently terminated, Mrs. Talbot had discarded her somber robes, and had put herself into the hands of the most fashionable dress-maker she could find.

Florence too discarded mourning for the first time, although her father had been almost two years in his quiet grave amongst the Hills; and, with her cousin, who was now indeed her only friend, if slightly uncongenial, decided to return to London forthwith.

It was early in May, and, with a sensation of extreme and most natural pleasure, the girl looked forward to a few months passed amongst the best of those whom she had learned under her cousin’s auspices to regard as “society.”

Dora Talbot herself was not by any means dead to the thought that it would be to her advantage to introduce into society a girl, well-born and possessed of an almost fabulous fortune.  Stray crumbs must surely fall to her share in a connection of this kind, and such crumbs she was prepared to gather with a thankful heart.

But unhappily she set her affection upon Sir Adrian Dynecourt, with his grand old castle and his princely rent-roll—­a “crumb” the magnitude and worth of which she was not slow to appreciate.  At first she had not deemed it possible that Florence would seriously regard a mere baronet as a suitor, when her unbounded wealth would almost entitle her to a duke.  But “love,” as she discovered later, to her discomfiture, will always “find the way.”  And one day, quite unexpectedly, it dawned upon her that there might—­if circumstances favored them—­grow up a feeling between Florence and Sir Adrian that might lead to mutual devotion.

Yet, strong in the belief of her own charms, Mrs. Talbot accepted the invitation given by Sir Adrian, and at the close of the season she and Florence Delmaine find themselves the first of a batch of guests come to spend a month or two at the old castle at Dynecourt.

Mrs. Talbot is still young, and, in her style, very pretty; her eyes are languishing and blue as gentian, her hair a soft nut-brown; her lips perhaps are not altogether faultless, being too fine and too closely drawn, but then her mouth is small.  She looks considerably younger than she really is, and does not forget to make the most of this comfortable fact.  Indeed, to a casual observer, her cousin looks scarcely her junior.