‘Not beautiful, Dinah. I am no amateur of infants, although I can tolerate their presence after the age of two years. As regards the particular infant sleeping in the cradle, yonder, even my knowledge of the subject enables me to say she is unornamental--as unornamental a child as could be found in Florence.’ ‘She is your living portrait,’ returned the mother, unconscious of irony. ‘Yes, even to her shrewd looks, to the firm way she clasps her fingers. And already--in that,’ murmured Dinah, penitently, ‘it may be she favours me--already, Baby has a temper.’ These exceedingly domestic confidences were interchanged in a vast old Florentine room, fitted up by Gaston Arbuthnot as a studio, and on a November night, some forty-eight hours later than the gray evening when Marjorie paid her farewell visit to Cassandra Tighe. But November in Florence is a different season to November in the English Channel. The dry nipping touch of Italian winter had already made itself felt beside the banks of the Arno, and the blaze from an up-piled heap of olive-faggots cast a ruddy glow upon the room and its occupants. Gaston Arbuthnot, his day’s work done, reclined, outstretched, in one of his favourite American chairs beside the hearth. On the other side the fire was a cradle, wickered, capacious, of the genuine Italian build that you may remember in many a sixteenth-century picture. And beside this cradle stood Dinah, serious of mien, gazing with rapt, Madonna-like devotion at the little English child who slept there. At Gaston’s last remark she stooped and drew a muslin curtain tenderly over her daughter’s face. Then she came across to her husband, she sank on her knees beside him. Stealing a soft arm round Mr. Arbuthnot’s neck, Dinah brought his cheek within reach of her lips. ‘Honestly and without jesting, you can say you think the child _ugly_?’ ‘I think she will never be as handsome as her mother--the better for herself, perhaps. Beauty is a snare. Who should know that better than Dinah Arbuthnot?’ ‘If I had been--well, plainer than I am, would you have sought me out, I wonder, in Aunt Sarah’s little cottage that summer?’ ‘Difficult to speculate backwards! I had thought some plainish women charming before I heard the name of Lesser Cheriton.’ ‘That is a matter of course. You had been the friend of Linda Thorne.’ ‘Linda Smythe, as she was at that time. I don’t know that “cette chère Smeet” could ever be called charming. She was lively, apt, a thorough mistress of situation and inexhaustively talkative--to a boy fresh from school that gift of talkativeness goes for much! She lacked charm. I have heard her mourn over the deficiency, in her plaintive little way, poor soul, with tears.’