Adelaide, shuffling her cards with deft, accustomed fingers, looked up and read something of his indecision in her brother’s face. “There’s a place here, Reuben,” she called out, drawing her silken skirts from a chair on to which they had overflowed. She was not a person of tact; her remark, and the tone of it, turned the balance. “No, thanks,” said Reuben, dropping his lids and assuming his most imperturbable air. It was not his custom to single out Judith for his attentions at these family gatherings, but to-night some irresistible magnetism drew him towards her. It only wanted that little goad from Adelaide to send him deliberately to the ottoman where she sat at work, her beautiful head bent over the many-coloured embroidery. Leo, lounging discontentedly a few paces off, with something of the air of a petulant child who is ashamed of itself, twisted a bit of silk in his long-brown fingers and hummed the air of _Ich grolle nicht_ below his breath. “Judith,” said Reuben, taking a seat very close beside her and looking straight at her face, “poor Ronaldson, the member for St. Baldwin’s, is dangerously ill.” She looked up eagerly. “Then you will be asked to stand?” He smiled; partly at her readiness of comprehension, partly at the frank, feminine hard-heartedness which realizes nothing beyond the circle of its own affections. “You mustn’t kill him off in that summary fashion, poor fellow.” “I meant, of course, if he should die.” “Under those circumstances I believe they will ask me to stand. That’s the beauty of you, Judith,” he added, half-seriously, half jestingly, “one never has to waste one’s breath with needless explanation.” She blushed, and smiled naïvely at the little compliment with its studied uncouthness. There was something incongruous in the girl’s rich and stately beauty, in the deep, serious gaze of the wonderful eyes, the severe, almost tragic lines of the head and face, with her total lack of manner, her little, abrupt, simple air, her apparent utter unconsciousness of her own value and importance as a young and beautiful woman. “Judith is not a woman of the world, certainly,” Reuben had said on one occasion, in reply to a criticism of his sister’s; “but neither is she a bad imitation of one.” And Adelaide, scenting a brotherly sarcasm, had allowed the subject to drop. Leo, who had broken his bit of silk and hummed his song to the end, rose at this point, and went from the room without a word. “Leo is in one of his moods,” said Judith looking after him. “I am sure I don’t know what is the matter with him.” Reuben, who understood perhaps more of Leopold’s state of mind than any one suspected, of the struggles with himself, the revolt against his surroundings which the lad was undergoing, answered slowly: “He is in a ticklish stage of his growth. Horribly unpleasant, I grant you. But I like the boy, though he regards me at present as an incarnation of the seven deadly sins.” “You know he is very fond of you.”