Baskerville’s tanned complexion grew a little pale, and he sat silent for some moments; so silent that Thorndyke began to suspect Mrs. Thorndyke’s idea was the right one after all—Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. Thorndyke had laughed at it as a woman’s fancy, saying to her that a woman couldn’t see a man pick up a girl’s handkerchief without constructing a matrimonial project on the basis of it; but Constance Thorndyke had stoutly maintained her opinion that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. His attitude now certainly indicated a very strong interest in her, especially when he said, after a considerable pause:— “If I had known Miss Clavering before this K. F. R. matter was started, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone into it. There is something very painful, you must know, Thorndyke, in dealing a blow at a woman—and a woman like Miss Clavering. By heaven, for all the luxury she lives in and all the respect and admiration she commands, there is not a woman in Washington whom I pity more!” Thorndyke had been turning over the leaves of a beautiful Apuleius, which was one of the treasures Baskerville was exhibiting to him. He opened the volume at the fifth metamorphosis and read out of it a single phrase which made Baskerville’s face gain color:“‘The bold, blind boy of evil ways.’ There’s nothing in all those old Greek literary fellows which excels this in humor, although what there is humorous in modern love I can’t see. It’s the most tragic thing in life, and if it is genuine, it draws blood every time.” Thorndyke had reason to say this. He had spent the eighteen best years of his life solitary and ill at ease because of a woman’s love and another woman’s spite, and not all the happiness of married life could ever make either him or Constance Thorndyke forget their starved hearts in those eighteen years of estrangement and separation. But as normal men deal with sentimentalities in a direct and simple manner, he added, after a minute: “Miss Clavering ought to marry. If she could be cut loose from Clavering himself and those two handsome and outrageous sisters of hers, it would be an unmixed blessing. But with all Miss Clavering’s merit and charms, that family of hers will always be a handicap with a man of the sort she would be likely to marry.” “Not if he really loved her, Thorndyke.” Senator Thorndyke smoked on in silence. “And,” continued Baskerville, “her mother is a most worthy woman, if uneducated; and although Reginald Clavering is a great fool, I believe he is a thoroughly upright man and even a gentleman. So you see it is not wholly a family of degenerates.” Thorndyke, seeing which way the tide was setting, remarked with perfect sincerity, “Miss Clavering is worthy of any man; and I say so not only on my own judgment, but on my wife’s.” “Sanest, soundest woman in Washington—except Miss Clavering herself,” was Baskerville’s reply to this.