“You are much younger than I expected to find you, Miss Wyvil,” said the lady, when both were seated.
“I am not Miss Wyvil, madame,” said Lilith, who, since her marriage, had always written herself Elizabeth Wyvil Hereward, but who, having been forbidden by her husband to retain his name, meant to obey him by dropping it, yet who wished to avoid deception in representing herself to be an unmarried girl.
The lady looked somewhat surprised, gazed wistfully at the speaker for a few seconds, and then said:
“You are very young to be a widow.”
“I am nearly eighteen, madame,” said Lilith, without deeming it necessary to enter into farther explanations—for was she not, indeed, “a widow in fate, if not in fact?”
“And you look even younger than that. When did you lose——” the lady began to question, but seeing Lilith trembling and turning pale, she desisted, and after a little pause she turned the conversation.
“Mrs. Wyvil, I have had about two hundred answers to my advertisement for a companion. These have taken myself and my private secretary, Monsieur Le Grange, about a week to get through with examining, although at about two-thirds of the letters we only glanced to see that they were written by utterly incompetent persons, who could not, indeed, write a fair, legible hand or compose a grammatical sentence. Of the other third we selected about a dozen persons, whom we saw, in turn, by appointment during the week. None of them—not one of them—suited me. Several were evidently in bad health, fitter for an infirmary than for any other place. Several others, though they were fair English scholars, had little or no knowledge of other languages; and the others were so unlovely in looks and manner that I could not think of one of them as a companion. Your letter was one of the last I received, and you are the very last with whom I have appointed an interview. Your letter made a favorable impression on me, and your appearance has deepened it,” concluded madame, who had evidently given these details only to afford Lilith the opportunity of recovering her composure.
Lilith bowed in respectful acknowledgment.
“The objection, as yet, seems to be your youth,” continued the lady.
“As another in my case said: ‘It is a fault that must mend daily,’ madame,” replied Lilith.