a large, striking-looking if not exactly handsome, lady-like though loud, woman, who talked a great deal about everything. She was clever, but eccentric, and took up all manner of fads and fancies, and though she was a thoroughly good woman, and well born and well bred, she did know the very queerest people—always hand in glove with some new crank. Hygiene, as she called it, was her pet hobby. Fortunately she had a particular aversion to dosing; but she dieted her daughter and herself, which, I fear, was nearly as bad. All her bread had husks in it, and she was always discovering that it was hurtful to eat any butter or drink any water, and no end of such notions. She dressed poor Loulie so frightfully that it was enough to take all the courage out of a girl: with all her dresses very short in the skirt, and big at the waist, and cut high, even in the evening, and thick shoes very queerly shaped, made after her own orders by some shoemaker of her own, and loose cotton gloves, and a mushroom hat down over her eyes. Finally she took up the mind-cure, and Loulie was to keep thinking all the time how perfectly well she was, which, I think, was what made her so thin and pale. Mrs. Latham always said that no one ever need be ill, and indeed she never was herself, for she was found dead in her bed one morning without any warning.

This happened at Jackson, New Hampshire, where they were spending the summer. Of course poor Loulie was half distracted with the shock and the grief. There was no one in the house where they were whom she knew at all, or who was very congenial, I fancy, and Willie Williams, whom they knew slightly, was in the neighbourhood, sketching, and was very kind and attentive, and more helpful than any one would ever have imagined he could be. He saw to all the business, and telegraphed for some cousin or other, and made the funeral arrangements; and the end of it was that in three months he and Loulie Latham were married, and had sailed for Europe on their wedding tour.

This was ten years ago, and they had never come back till now. They meant to come back sooner, but one thing after another prevented. They had no children for several years, and they thought it a good chance to poke around in the wildest parts of Southern Europe—Corsica, and Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles, and all that—and made their winter quarters at Palermo. Then for the next six years they lived in less out-of-the-way places. They had four children, and lost two; and one thing or another kept them abroad, until they suddenly made up their minds to come home.

We had not heard much of them while they were gone. Loulie had no one to correspond with, and Willie, like most men, never wrote letters; but we all were very curious to see them, and willing to welcome them, though we did not know how much they were going to surprise us. Willie Williams, indeed, was just the same as ever—in fact, our only surprise in him was to see him look no older than when he went away; but as for Mrs. Williams, she gave us quite a shock. For my part, I shall never forget how taken aback I was, when, strolling down to the station one afternoon with the children, with a vague idea of meeting Tom, who might come on that train, but who didn't, I came suddenly upon a tall, splendidly shaped, stately creature, in the most magnificent clothes; at least they looked so, though they were all black, and the dress was only cashmere, but it was draped in an entirely new way. She wore a shoulder-cape embroidered in jet, and a large black hat and feather set back over great masses of rich dark auburn hair; and, though so late in the season, she carried a large black lace parasol. To be sure, it was still very warm and pleasant. I never should have ventured to speak to her, but she stopped at once, and said, "Perhaps you have forgotten me, Mrs. White?"

"No—oh, no," I said, trying not to seem confused; "Mrs.—Mrs. Williams, I believe?"

"You knew me better as Loulie Latham," she said pleasantly enough; but I cannot say I liked her manner. There was something in it, though I could not say what, that seemed like condescension, and she hardly mentioned my children—and most people think them so pretty—though I saw her look at them earnestly once or twice.

Willie was the same good-hearted, hospitable fellow as ever, and begged us to come in, and go all over his house, and see his studio that he had built on, and his bric-à-brac. And a lovely house it was, full of beautiful things, for he knew them, if he could not paint them, and indeed he had a great talent for amateur carpentering. We wished he would come to our houses and do little jobs to show his good-will, instead of giving us his pictures; but we tried to say something nice about them, and the frames were most elegant. Of course we saw a good deal of Mrs. Williams, but I don't think any of us took to her. She was very quiet, as she always had been, but with a difference. She was perfectly polite, and I can't say she gave herself airs, exactly; but there was something very like it in her seeming to be so well satisfied with herself and her position, and caring so little whether she pleased us or not. Of course we all invited them, and they accepted most of our invitations when they were asked together, though she showed no great eagerness to do so; but she would not join one of our morning clubs, and had no reason to give. It could not be want of time, for we used to see her dawdling about with her children all the morning, though we knew that she had brought over an excellent, highly trained, Protestant North German nurse for them. When we asked her to the dancing-class, she said she never danced, and we had better not depend on her, but Mr. Williams enjoyed it, and would be glad to come without her. We did not relish this indifference, though it gave us an extra man, and Minnie Mason said that it was not a good thing for a man to get into the way of going about without his wife.

"Why not?" said Mrs. Williams, opening her great eyes with such an air of utter ignorance that it was impossible to explain. It was easy to see that she need not be afraid of trusting her husband out of her sight, for a more devoted and admiring one I never saw, whether with her or away from her talking of "Loulou" and her charms, as if sure of sympathy. But we had our doubts as to how much she returned his attachment, and Minnie said it was easy to see that she only tolerated him; and we all thought her unappreciative, to say the least. He was very much interested in her dress, and spent a great deal of time in choosing and buying beautiful ornaments and laces and stuffs for her, which she insisted on having made up in her own way, languidly remarking that it was enough for Willie to make her a fright on canvas, without doing so in real life. Blanche Livermore said she must have some affection for him, to sit so much to him, for he had painted about a hundred pictures of her in different styles, each one worse than the last. You would have thought her hideous if you had only seen them; but Willie's artist friends, some of them very distinguished, had painted her too, and had made her into a regular beauty. Opinions differed about her looks; but those who liked her the least had to allow that she was fine-looking, though some said it was greatly owing to her style of dress. We all called it shockingly conspicuous at first, and then went home and tried to make our things look as much like hers as we possibly could, which was very little; for, as we afterwards found out, they came from a modiste at Paris who worked for only one or two private customers, and whose costumes had a kind of combination of the fashionable and the artistic which it seemed