Florence laughed softly, and eyed him over her fan. She always used a fan, even in the depth of winter--and indeed her boudoir was so luxuriously warm and fragrant that it did not there seem out of place. She was wearing a loose tea-gown of peacock-blue plush over a satin petticoat of the palest rose-color--a daring combination which she had managed to harmonise extremely well--and the fan which she now held to her mouth was of pale rose-colored feathers. As Hubert looked at her and waited for his answer, he was struck by two things--first by the choiceness and beauty of her surroundings, and secondly by the fatigued expression of her eyes, which were set in hollows of purple shadows, and almost veiled by lids which had the faintly reddened tint which comes of wakefulness at night. "I shall next ask what is the matter with you," he said. "You really do not look well, Florence!" "Do I not?" She laid down her fan, took up a hand-glass set in silver from a table at her side, and studied her face in the mirror for a few seconds with some intentness. "You are right," she said, when she put it down; "I am growing hatefully old and haggard and ugly. What can one do? Would a winter in the South give me back my good looks, do you think? Perhaps I had better consult a doctor when I go up to town. I am not so old yet that I need lose all my 'beauty,' as people used to call it, am I?" "Why do you care so much?" Hubert asked. He fancied that there was something deeper in her anxiety than the mere vanity of a pretty woman whose youth was fast fleeting away. "Why does every woman care? For my husband's sake, of course," she answered, with a slight laugh, but a look of carking care and pain in her haggard eyes. "If I leave off looking pretty and bright, how am I to know that he will care for me any longer? And, if not----" "If not! You are a mystery to me, Florence; you never professed before to trouble yourself about your husband's love." "If I am a mystery, you are a perfect baby, my dear boy--I might almost say a perfect fool--in some respects. If he ceases to love me, he--don't you know that he may still leave me penniless? I had no settlements." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she said the words. "Is that it?" said Hubert coldly. "I did not give you credit for so much worldly wisdom, Flossy. If that is your view of the case, I wonder that you do not pay a little more attention to the General's wishes sometimes. I have seen you treat him with very little consideration." "He is so wearisome! One cannot always be on one's good behavior," Flossy murmured; "and, as long as one looks nice and gives him a word or two now and then, just to keep him in good-humor----"