"Adela! you queen of girls, how have you done it?" he began, but she
thrust him aside and flew up into my arms; and when I had her in her
own room it came out, I hardly know how, that she had so shown that
she cared for no one she had ever seen except my father, that they
found they _did_ love each other; and--and--in short they were going
to be married."

Really it seemed much less wonderful then than it does in thinking of
it afterwards. My father was much handsomer than any young man I
ever saw, with a hawk nose, a clear rosy skin, pure pink and white
like a boy's, curly little rings of white hair, blue eyes clear and
bright as the sky, a tall upright soldierly figure, and a magnificent
stately bearing, courteous and grand to all, but sweetly tender to a
very few, and to her above all. It always had been so ever since he
had brought her home an orphan of six years old from her mother's
death-bed at Nice. And he was youthful, could ride or hunt all day
without so much fatigue as either of his sons, and was as fresh and
eager in all his ways as a lad.

And she, our pretty darling! I don't think Torwood and I in the
least felt the incongruity of her becoming our step-mother, only that
papa was making her more entirely his own.

I am glad we did not mar the sunshine. It did not last long. She
came home thoroughly unwell from their journey to Switzerland, and
never got better. By the time the spring had come round again, she
was lying in the vault at Trevorsham, and we were trying to keep poor
little Alured alive and help my poor father to bear it.

He was stricken to the very heart, and never was the same man again.