Why should she hate this big, bland, stately mortal, this Stephen Gore who had no enemies and many friends? That was a question she often asked herself. Was it because she had been caught by the suspicion that he might console the widow for the husband’s death? There was no palpable sin in the possibility, and yet it angered her, even though she had no great love for her mother. A supersensitive delicacy made her jealous for the dead. The very buxom effulgence of my lord’s vitality seemed to insult the shadow that haunted the house for her. As she sat at the window looking down upon the garden the sun sank low in the west, throwing a broad radiance under the branches of the trees. Their round boles were bathed in light. The figures that moved about the park were touched with a weird brilliance, so that a red coat shone like a ruby, a blue like a sapphire, a silver-gray like an opal iridescent in the sun. There was much of the charm of one of Watteau’s pictures, yet with a greater significance of light and shadow. Dusk began to fall. A hand fumbled at the latch of the door, and a figure in black entered bearing a tray. It was Mrs. Jael, her mother’s woman, a stout little body with a florid face and an overpolite way with her that repelled cynics. She had amiable blue eyes that seemed to see nothing, a loose mouth, and a big bosom. Her personality appeared to have soaked itself in sentimentality as a stewed apple soaks itself in syrup. Barbara did not turn her head. “Why, dear heart, all in the dusk! Here’s a little dish or two.” “Set them down on the table.” “You’ll get your death chill—there, sitting at that window—” The woman fidgeted officiously about the room, as though trying to insinuate her sympathy betwixt the girl’s silence and reserve. Her dilatory habit only roused Barbara’s impatience. Mrs. Jael’s sly, succulent motherliness had lost its power of deceiving, so far as Anne Purcell’s daughter was concerned. “Light the candles.” She remained motionless while the woman bustled to and fro. “Thanks. You can leave me, Jael.” The tire-woman could meet a snub with the most obtuse good temper. “Should you be tired, Mistress Barbara, I can come and put you to bed, my dear, while my lady is at the playhouse.” “I am old enough to put myself to bed, am I not?” Mrs. Jael laughed as though bearing with a peevish miss of twelve. “Dear life, of course you are.” And she broke into a fat giggle as though something had piqued her sense of humor. Barbara’s face remained turned toward the window. “You can go, Jael.” The woman curtesied and obeyed. Her face lost its good-humor, however, as quickly as a buffoon’s loses its stage grin when he has turned his back upon the audience. She stood outside the door a moment, listening, and then went softly down the passage to my lady’s room, with its stamped leather hangings in green and gold, its great carved bed and Eastern rugs.