"I wish life didn't present itself to you as a melodrama," he volunteered, with almost a brightness of reproach. She shook her head. The tremulous expectancy of her face remained unchanged. "I wish so, too," she answered. "Well!" He spoke robustly, with a quick decision. "I'm going back. I shall sail next week." She drew a quick breath. Ready as she was to disbelieve him, it was impossible to deny herself an unreasonable relief. She held herself rigid with anticipation, knowing what the next words would be, and how he would command or entreat her also to go. But they amazed her. "Rose," said he, "this may be the last little talk we have together here. I want to speak to you about your mother." "My mother!" Unconsciously she drew nearer him. Her mother was--what? A banished dream, not forgotten, but relegated to dim tapestried chambers because the air of the present seemed to blur out memory by excess of light. She had awakened from her girlhood's dreams; to them, chiefly, her mother had belonged. Now that past beneficence was a faded flower found in a casket, a scent of beauty touched by time. "Sit down," said MacLeod, and she obeyed him. He stretched out his legs at ease, and put his head back, his eyes closed, in an easy contemplation. "We don't speak of her very often, do we, little girl?" "No!" Her irrepressible comment was, "I thought you had forgotten her." But he continued,-- "I was thinking the other day how much you lose in not having known her as she was when I met her first." "I have the miniature." "I know. But that's only a suggestion. It doesn't help me bring her to life for you. She had beauty--not so much as you have--and an extraordinary grace and charm. She had, too, that something we trace back to breeding." He had always undervalued the virtues claimed by gentle birth, and she looked at him, amazed. He understood, and laughed a little. His best weapon against the aristocrat had been tolerance, at its mildest, or a gentle scorn. Where a mob threw eggs, he tossed a rounded epithet. "I know," he said, "you think I laugh at breeding. Not in her. She had its rarest virtues. She was like an old portrait come to life. She couldn't think of her own advantage. She couldn't lie. Ah, well! well!" He seemed to be musing over the sadness of things begun and ended all too soon, over a light quenched, a glory gone. Rose found herself passionately anxious to hear more. He had brought her a jewel, a part of her heritage; she might have seen it, but without knowing how bright it was. She was acquiescing, too, in the old spell of his kindness, but never, it seemed to her, so beguilingly administered: for he had come, like a herald accredited by an impeccable authority--the talisman of her mother's name. He was, she thought from his voice, gently amused, even smiling a little to himself.