“The bitter things remain, and with them—for contrast—the silliest trifles.” He looked up at her with a brightening of the eyes. “Yes; why, Heaven alone knows! I can remember kissing my mother when she lay dead. And with the same vividness I can remember a wooden horse I had as a boy, a gray horse with a brown saddle painted on his back, and his nostrils a gay scarlet. Whenever I see a horse I think of that wooden horse’s nose.” Barbara gave a queer, short laugh, her face firing with sudden animation. “That is just what life is. And sometimes we see the same thing again—afterward. I can call to mind looking into the window of a goldsmith’s shop, and seeing upon a little green board a short gold chain with a knot of pearls for a button. Why I should have noticed and remembered that one thing I can’t tell. But I saw its brother chain one night this summer.” His eyes met hers, calm, steady, and unperturbed. “Where?” “On the cloak you wore that night.” “A cloak?” “Yes, at Hortense Mancini’s, when you came in wet with the rain. And I thought that one of the gold chains seemed missing.” She watched his face, her hand going instinctively toward her bosom. “Strange! That chain probably belonged once to the cloak I wore.” “Ah!” “There was a chain missing and a small scar in the cloth, as though it had been torn away. The loss might easily be answered for.” She steadied herself against the table, feeling every muscle in her rigid, yet ready to tremble when the end had come. “You had worn that cloak before?” “I?” He glanced up at her curiously, struck by her white, set face and the harsh straining of her voice. “Yes.” “No. The cloak was borrowed, if the truth concerns you.” “Borrowed?” “I came home from sea with one shirt, one coat, and the other part of me in like proportion. My father’s wardrobe came to the rescue.” “Then the cloak was my Lord Gore’s?” “Yes; and his man probably stole the chain and sold it.” He laughed; but on looking up at her again a silent, questioning wonder swept the lighter lines aside. She was standing motionless behind the table, her hands fixed upon the edge thereof, her eyes staring at nothing like the eyes of one in a trance. Yet even as he looked at her a great spasm of emotion seemed to sweep across her face. She turned without a word to him and fled out of the room. John Gore found himself looking at the table behind which she had stood and at the sword that lay unsheathed thereon. The inexplicable swiftness of her mood went utterly beyond him, save that the words my lord had spoken flashed up like letters of fire upon the wall. He rose and went to the door of the music-room, moving slowly as one weighted with thoughts that bear heavily upon the heart. The garden was empty, save for its closely clipped bays. Like some wayward cloud-shadow she had passed it and was gone.