She stood gazing at that pictured face, her hands clasped, her heart beating heavily. Everything confirmed her in her despair--in her iron resolve. At last, with a long-drawn sigh, she withdrew her eyes from the picture, and began to explore the room. No, there was no trace of vulgarity--no ugly indication of a vicious mind. Christabel glanced at the open book on the ottoman, half expecting to find the trail of the serpent there--in some shameful French novel, the very name of which she had not been allowed to hear. But the book was only the last _Contemporary Review_, open at an article of Gladstone's. Then, with faintly tremulous hand, she took one of the vellum-bound duodecimos from a shelf of the revolving book-table--"Selections from Shelley"--and on the title-page, "Angus to Stella, Rome," and a date, just three years old, in the hand she knew so well. She looked in other books--all choicest flowers of literature--and in each there was the same familiar penmanship, sometimes with a brief sentence that made the book a _souvenir_--sometimes with a passionate line from Shakespeare or Dante, Heine or De Musset. Christabel remembered, with a sharp pang of jealousy, that her lover had never so written in any book he had given her. She ignored the change which a year or two may make in a man's character, when he has reached one of the turning points of life; and how a graver deeper phase of feeling, less eager to express itself in other people's flowery language, succeeds youth's fervid sentiment. Had Werther lived and loved a second Charlotte, assuredly he would have loved her after a wiser and graver fashion. But Christabel had believed herself her lover's first and only love, and finding that she was but the second volume in his life, abandoned herself at once to despair. She sank into one of the low luxurious chairs, just as the door opened, and Miss Mayne came into the room. If she had looked lovely as Psyche, in her classic drapery, with the emerald butterfly on her shoulder, she looked no less beautiful in the costly-simplicity of her home toilet. She wore a sacque-shaped tea-gown of soft French-grey silk, lined with palest pink satin, over a petticoat that seemed a mass of cream-coloured lace. Her only ornaments were three half-hoop rings--rubies, diamonds, and sapphires--too large for the slender third finger of her left hand, and half concealing a thin wedding-ring--and a star-shaped brooch--one large cat's-eye with diamond rays, which fastened the lace handkerchief at her throat.