In a charming residence, half cottage, half manor-house, embosomed in the woodland scenery of Hampshire, lived a family who might have formed the model for a poet’s ideal of domestic happiness. The home-circle was not a large one. It consisted of only four persons--Captain Harley Westford, of the merchant service, his wife, son, and daughter. The Captain and his wife were both in the fairest prime of middle age. Life for them seemed at its brightest and best. Clara Westford’s girlish beauty might, indeed, have vanished with the snows of departed winters, the blossoms of bygone spring-times; but another kind of beauty had succeeded--the calm loveliness of the matron whose life has been cloudl…
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