“Will you listen to Sara?” asked her dutiful nephew. “She has hauled me about this day from one retired tradesman’s house to another, scattering compliments as she went, and embracing every man, woman, and child she met of the smart set—the smarter the better. She couldn’t be kept from going with those people unless she were chained up.” “Well,” faintly replied Mrs. Luttrell, “one has to be a hypocrite in this world; but I do say, Constance, that next my own yours is the best drawing–room in Washington.” “That is indeed high praise,” replied Constance Thorndyke, smiling, “and I am vain enough to believe it is sincere, especially when I can get my own husband to come home early Thursday afternoon.” Mrs. Thorndyke had never been strictly beautiful nor even remarkably pretty before her marriage, but since then she had developed a late–flowering loveliness which was much more than beauty. She was happy, she loved and was beloved; she had it in her power to assist the man she loved without making him hate her; she had, in fact, all that she had ever asked of high heaven, except one thing—she was childless. But that one supreme disappointment gave to her face and to her soul a touch of softness, of resignation, that disarmed fate. With a tender feminine superstition, she believed that, this last gift having been denied her, she would be suffered to retain the happiness already hers. Thorndyke himself had to be both husband and children to her, and on him she concentrated all the love and solicitude of her nature. That he was happy there could be no doubt. In Constance he had all that he had ever wished for. The Thorndyke house was one of the few in Washington which Baskerville could enter with a clear conscience in the matter of duty calls. He always paid them promptly to Constance Thorndyke, and often went when there was no obligation for him to go. He had some one besides Constance Thorndyke in view, however, in paying that particular visit; it was Anne Clavering whom he had really come to see. Mrs. Thorndyke found means to let him know that Anne had not been there yet; and while Baskerville was taking what comfort he could out of this Anne walked into the drawing–room. She looked pale and worn and much older than she really was. Baskerville’s keen eye took this in at a glance; but like a sincere lover he admired her none the less for not being in a flush of spirits, and felt an increased tenderness for her. A delicate rosy color flooded her face when she saw who was present, and rosier still when Baskerville established her in a corner, that he might have a monopoly of her sweet company. Bearing in mind his promise to discipline his aunt, almost the first words Baskerville said to Anne were: “I hear my aunt was quite impertinent to you the other night; but before I slept I made her promise to apologize to you.”