“No, no.  He told me you were an angel, and I believe it.”

“An angel! a good-for-nothing, foolish woman, who sees everything too late.”

“Nobody else should say so before me,” said the little gentleman grandly.  “I shall take his word before yours on this one subject.  If ever there was an angel, you are one; and oh, what would I give if I could but say or do anything in the world to comfort you!”

“You can do nothing for me, dear, but come and see me often, and talk to me as you do—­on the one sad theme my broken heart has room for.”

This invitation delighted Lord Tadcaster, and the sweet word “dear,” from her lovely lips, entered his heart, and ran through all his veins like some rapturous but dangerous elixir.  He did not say to himself, “She is a widow with a child, feels old with grief, and looks on me as a boy who has been kind to her.”  Such prudence and wariness were hardly to be expected from his age.  He had admired her at first sight, very nearly loved her at their first interview, and now this sweet word opened a heavenly vista.  The generous heart that beat in his small frame burned to console her with a life-long devotion and all the sweet offices of love.

He ordered his yacht to Gravesend—­for he had become a sailor—­and then he called on Mrs. Staines, and told her, with a sort of sheepish cunning, that now, as his yacht happened to be at Gravesend, he could come and see her very often.  He watched her timidly, to see how she would take that proposition.

She said, with the utmost simplicity, “I’m very glad of it.”

Then he produced his oracles; and she devoured them.  Such precepts to Tadcaster as she could apply to her own case she instantly noted in her memory, and they became her law from that moment.

Then, in her simplicity, she said, “And I will show you some things, in his own handwriting, that may be good for you; but I can’t show you the whole book:  some of it is sacred from every eye but his wife’s.  His wife’s?  Ah me! his widow’s.”

Then she pointed out passages in the diary that she thought might be for his good; and he nestled to her side, and followed her white finger with loving eyes, and was in an elysium—­which she would certainly have put a stop to at that time, had she divined it.  But all wisdom does not come at once to an unguarded woman.  Rosa Staines was wiser about her husband than she had been, but she had plenty to learn.

Lord Tadcaster anchored off Gravesend, and visited Mrs. Staines nearly every day.  She received him with a pleasure that was not at all lively, but quite undisguised.  He could not doubt his welcome; for once, when he came, she said to the servant, “Not at home,” a plain proof she did not wish his visit to be cut short by any one else.

And so these visits and devoted attentions of every kind went on unobserved by Lord Tadcaster’s friends, because Rosa would never go out, even with him; but at last Mr. Lusignan saw plainly how this would end, unless he interfered.