"I'm quite sure," said Rodney emphatically, and Edith laughed good-humouredly and only answered, "Well, that settles it, of course." But a few weeks later she came into his dressing-room one night and settled herself comfortably in an armchair. "Rodney dear," she began, "I have something to tell you. We're going to have another child, and I think that really does mean we must move to the bigger house we were talking of the other day." Rodney felt a definite sensation of shock as if some familiar string had been twanged in his brain. As he congratulated Edith and expressed his own gratification his thoughts were racing madly, but it was not till Edith left the room, looking back from the door to say with a plaintive accent, "Do hurry up, darling," that he remembered the incident of three years ago. It was difficult to imagine that there had ever been a time when he had smoked upstairs, but for a moment the parallel stood out sharply; both occasions had been used by Edith to gain some small point, and to establish her ascendancy over him. As the recollection faded into dimness he smiled contentedly. Edith had consolidated her position as good wife and good mother, the naturally dominant factor in the home. IV The portrait entitled, "Mrs. Rodney Greene with Geoffrey, Lavinia and Hugh," exhibited in the Academy of 1910, was much admired by the public and favourably commented on by the Press. Edith herself, looking at it hung in her own dining-room after it had been returned from Burlington House, felt her eyelids prick with sudden tears at the revelation of her own triumphant motherhood. She had been painted in a wine-red gown, sitting in a high-backed chair with her face turned a little sideways and downwards, brooding tenderly over Lavinia and Hugh who stood at her left knee, while her right arm was thrown affectionately round Geoffrey's shoulders, as if to compensate for the fact that she had turned away from where he stood on the right. All three children were in white: Geoffrey and Hugh in sailor suits, Lavinia in a softly hanging silk dress. All three were upright and dark, with clear soft colour in their cheeks, but whereas both the boys were gazing out of the canvas, with serious dreaming faces, Lavinia had looked up at her mother, and her lips were parted in a smile over her small first teeth. This happy, unstudied little pose was the starting point of all Edith's comments on the portrait, until the day when Mrs. Hugh Greene, her husband's aunt, came to tea and asked to have it shown to her. "I only went once to the Academy this summer," she explained, "and though of course I saw the portrait and admired it very much, I should certainly like to see it again." "It looks very nice in the dining-room," Edith answered as they went downstairs. "In fact we are extremely pleased with it, though I think perhaps it flatters me a little." She laughed deprecatingly.