She was a tall woman, with a figure full of dignity and grace. If it was true that nobody knew who she was, it was at least true also, as even her husband allowed, that she might have been a princess so far as her bearing and manners went. She was dressed in soft black satin which did not rustle or assert itself, but hung in long sweeping folds, here and there broken in outline by feathery touches of lace. Her dark hair was still perfect in color and texture. Indeed, she was still under forty, and the prime of her beauty scarcely impaired. There was a little fitful color on her cheek, though she was usually pale, and her eyes had a kind of feverish, suspicious brightness like sentinels on the watch for danger signals. Yet she came in without hurry, with a smile from one to another of the group of gentlemen, none of whom showed, whatever they may have felt, any emotion. John Trevanion, still blank and quiet against the firelight; the doctor, though he lifted his eyes momentarily, still dropping through his hands, back and forwards, the sliding, smooth surfaces of the cards. From the dimness in the background Hamerton’s young face shone out with a sort of Medusa look of horror and pain, but he was so far out of the group that he attracted no notice. Mrs. Trevanion made no immediate reply to her husband. She advanced into the room, Rosalind following her like a shadow. “I am sorry,” she said calmly, “to be late: have you not begun your rubber? I knew there were enough without me.” “There’s never enough without you,” her husband answered roughly; “you know that as well as I do. If there were twice enough, what has that to do with it? You know my play, which is just the one thing you do know. If a man can’t have his wife to make up his game, what is the use of a wife at all? And this is not the first time, Madam; by Jove, not the first time by a dozen. Can’t you take another time for your nap, or your nursery, or whatever it is? I don’t believe a word of the nursery. It is something you don’t choose to have known, it is some of your low--” “Rosalind, your father has no footstool,” said Mrs. Trevanion. She maintained her calm unmoved. “There are some fresh cards, doctor, in the little cabinet.” “And how the devil,” cried the invalid, in his sharp tones, “can I have my footstool, or clean cards, or anything I want when you are away--systematically away? I believe you do it on purpose to set up a right--to put me out in every way, that goes without saying, that everybody knows, is the object of your life.” Still she did not utter a word of apology, but stooped and found the footstool, which she placed at her husband’s feet. “This is the one that suits you best,” she said. “Come, John, if I am the culprit, let us lose no more time.”