A handsome woman still, though not of the type that commands a reverent admiration.  Her frivolity did not exclude a suggestion of shrewdness, nor yet of capacity for emotion, but it was difficult to imagine wise or elevated thought behind that narrow brow.  She was elaborately dressed, with only the most fashionable symbols of widowhood; rings adorned her podgy little hand, and a bracelet her white wrist.  Refinement she possessed only in the society-journal sense, but her intonation was that of the idle class, and her grammar did not limp.

’There—­let me look.  Oh, I think that’s an improvement—­more distingue.  And now tell me the news.  How is your father?’

‘Very bad, I’m afraid,’ said Horace, when he had regarded himself in a mirror with something of doubtfulness.  ’Nancy says that she’s afraid he won’t get well.’

’Oh, you don’t say that!  Oh, how very sad!  But let us hope.  I can’t think it’s so bad as that.’

Horace sat in thought.  Mrs. Damerel, her bright eyes subduing their gaiety to a keen reflectiveness, put several questions regarding the invalid, then for a moment meditated.

’Well, we must hope for the best.  Let me know to-morrow how he gets on—­be sure you let me know.  And if anything should happen—­ oh, but that’s too sad; we won’t talk about it.’

Again she meditated, tapping the floor, and, as it seemed, trying not to smile.

’Don’t be downcast, my dear boy.  Never meet sorrow half-way—­if you knew how useful I have found it to remember that maxim.  I have gone through sad, sad things—­ah!  But now tell me of your own affairs.  Have you seen la petite?’

‘I just saw her the other evening,’ he answered uneasily.

’Just?  What does that mean, I wonder?  Now you don’t look anything like so well as when you were at Scarborough.  You’re worrying; yes, I know you are.  It’s your nervous constitution, my poor boy.  So you just saw her?  No more imprudences?’

She examined his face attentively, her lips set with tolerable firmness.

‘It’s a very difficult position, you know,’ said Horace, wriggling in his chair.  ’I can’t get out of it all at once.  And the truth is, I’m not sure that I wish to.’

Mrs. Damerel drew her eyebrows together, and gave a loud tap on the floor.

’Oh, that’s weak—­that’s very weak!  After promising me!  Now listen; listen seriously.’  She raised a finger.  ’If it goes on, I have nothing—­more—­whatever to do with you.  It would distress me very, very much; but I can’t interest myself in a young man who makes love to a girl so very far beneath him.  Be led by me, Horace, and your future will be brilliant.  Prefer this young lady of Camberwell, and lose everything.’

Horace leaned forward and drooped his head.

‘I don’t think you form anything like a right idea of her,’ he said.

The other moved impatiently.