The life of Christopher Columbus.... It was bound in crimson calf, and the gilt edges of its unopened pages clung crisply together. She replaced it on the shelf and, with the same dreary mechanical determination, drew forth another. The "Boy’s own Book"; a veteran, this; from too much loving usage, dogs’-eared, scored with small grimy finger-prints; its quaint woodcuts highly coloured here and there by a very juvenile artist. "To Henry English, on his ninth birthday, from his affectionate mother," ran the dedication, in a flowing Italian hand. A gift that had made a little lad very happy, some twenty-five years ago. And now Rosamond’s fingers hovered over the case of letters. Well did her heart forebode whose missives lay treasured there. Nevertheless, the sight of the handwriting struck her like a stab. Not yet could she summon strength to read those close-marked pages. Nay—were they even hers to read? "Darling old Mammy—" this was not for her. Yet she turned the sheets over and over, lingering upon them. Here was an envelope, endorsed in the same fair running hand as the book: "My beloved son’s last letter." And here, on a card, was gummed a piece of white heather—memorial of God knows what pretty coquetry between the stalwart soldier and his "darling old Mammy." What things must people live through—people who dare to love! Rosamond had never loved. Had she not done well? When love offered itself to her she had been too young to know its face. And now.... She dropped the case from her hands as if it burnt her, and stood, poised for flight; then, as if driven by an invincible force, seized upon the closed frame, almost with anger. Fate held her, she could not escape. Harry English, looking at her! Not the child, not the adolescent, but Harry the man as she, his wife, had known him. Even through the incomplete medium of a photograph, the strong black and white of his colouring, the bold line of his features, the concentrated purposeful expression, was reproduced with an effect of extraordinary vitality. It seemed almost impossible to think of him as dead who could look at her so livingly from this little portrait. * * * * * Old Mary came in hurriedly. "Here I am, ma’am, here I am! I heard you call." Rosamond lifted dazed eyes. It took a perceptible space of time for the meaning of the words to filter to her brain. Then she said with vague impatience: "I did not call." "But you wanted me, surely," said the woman. Her glance wandered from the portrait in her new mistress’s hand to the disorder on her old mistress’s altar. "Surely you wanted me, ma’am."