“How was that?” “She eloped from a school in Switzerland with an officer in a line regiment—a love match; but she went wrong a few years afterwards, left her husband, and died in poverty at Boulogne, I believe.” “Another ghost!” exclaimed Juanita, dolefully. “Poor, lost soul, she _must_ walk. I can’t help feeling sorry for her—married to a man who was unkind to her, perhaps, and whom she discovered unworthy of her love. And then years afterwards meeting some one worthier and better, whom she loved passionately. That is dreadful! Oh, Godfrey! if I had been married before I saw you—and we had met—and you had cared for me—God knows what kind of woman I should have been. Perhaps I should have been one of those poor souls who have a history, the women mother and her friends stare at and whisper about in the Park. Why are people so keenly interested in them, I wonder? Why can’t they leave them alone?” “It would be charity to do so.” “No one is charitable—in London.” “Do you think people are more indulgent in the country?” “I suppose not. I’m afraid English people keep all their charity for the Continent. I shall never look at the girl in that group without thinking of her sad story. She looks hardly fifteen in the picture. Poor thing! She did not know what was coming.” They loitered over their tea-table, making the most of their happiness. The sweetness of their dual life had not begun to pall. It was still new and wonderful to be together thus, unrestrained by any other presence. In the midst of their gay talk Juanita’s eyes wandered to the bronze Time upon the chimney-piece, and the familiar figure suggested gloomy ideas. “Oh, Godfrey! look at that grim old man with his scythe, mowing down our happy moments so fast that we can hardly taste their sweetness before they speed away. To think that our lives are hurrying past us like a rapid river, and that we shall be like him” (pointing distastefully to the type of old age—the wrinkled brow and flowing beard) “before we know that we have lived.” “It is a pity, sweet, that life should be so short.” Her glance wandered to the dark oak panel above the clock, and she started up from her low chair with a faint scream, stood on tiptoe before the fireplace, snatched half a dozen scraggy peacock’s feathers from the panel, and threw them at her husband’s feet. “Look at those,” she exclaimed, pointing to them as they lay there. “Peacock’s feathers! What have they done that you should use them so?” “Oh, Godfrey, don’t you know?” she asked, earnestly. “Don’t I know what?” “That peacock’s feathers bring ill luck. It is fatal to take them into a house. They are an evil omen. And father _will_ pick them up when he is strolling about the lawn, and _will_ bring them indoors; though I am always scolding him for his obstinate folly, and always throwing the horrid things away.” “And this kind of thing has been going on for some years, I suppose?” asked Godfrey, smiling at her intensity.