She looked listlessly over her shoulder at my lord, her lassitude giving her an air of tired vacuity. And the smile he gave her might have been the smile he would have given to a credulous child. “We are all moths, coz, when the candles are lit. Which is a riddle that you need not be bothered with.” Her going relieved the two worldlings from an uncongenial feeling of oppression, and yet some uneasiness of spirit remained to trouble both. Miss Barbara had chilled the room for them with her wraithlike and sinister sickliness. The sleek self-content of the well-fed animal had been disturbed by impressions and by thoughts that neither cared to analyze. My Lord of Gore stood at the window, stroking his periwig with some such dissatisfaction on his face as he might have betrayed at the first hint that he was growing old. “The girl looks ill.” Madam made a _moue_. “Oh—that is nothing; she is always the color of sour cream. Lord, but I think I hate the child; she drags things into my mind that make me miserable.” The angles of the man’s mouth twitched slightly. “By the plague, Nan, why let yourself be overshadowed?” “Why—indeed! We might understand that, you and I.” He turned to her sharply with a gleam of impatience in his eyes. “Why not be rid of the little blight?” “Yes, no doubt—and how? Are you ingenious enough to suggest a method?” “Get her married.” “Lord! And who would have her?” “She is something of a bargain—in movables. There are plenty of debtors and fools.” “The persuading would lie elsewhere. The girl has a sort of sullen stubbornness that is worse than temper.” Stephen Gore shook his periwig with the action of an impatient horse shaking its mane. “I suppose these mopes were put on with her mourning. The girl wants the merry devil in her rousing. Jove, Nan, but she’s your child; there must be blood somewhere.” Anne Purcell picked up a fan, spread it with an impatient whisk of the hand, and glanced uneasily at the closed door. She started up brusquely, crossed the room, flung the door open suddenly, and looked down the long gallery as though to prove that they were not being spied upon. Then she returned to her tapestried chair. “Well, have you any plan?” My lord licked his upper lip, a sly smile spreading over his healthy face. “Will she go out with you?” “Sometimes. To the old, dull houses where they wear starched aprons and have the servants in to prayers.” “And judge of godliness by the length of the jowl. Poor people! No—that is not the elixir, the juice of crab-apples. Take her to the Mancini, that witch who turns dross into sunshine. The woman would wake the merry devil in a Quaker. She has old Rowley kissing her very slippers.” “Hortense?” “Who else, Nan? It is life, blood, mischief that the girl needs.” My lady’s eyes flashed up at him mistrustfully for the moment. He caught the look and the significance thereof, and laughed.