“Ever since I can remember.” “And have the peacock’s feathers brought you misfortune?” She looked at him gravely for a few moments, and then burst into a joyous laugh. “No, no, no, no,” she said, “Fate has been over kind to me. I have never known sorrow. Fate has given me _you_. I am the happiest woman in the world—for there can’t be another _you_, and you are mine. It is like owning the Kohinoor diamond; one knows that one stands alone. Still, all the same, peacock’s feathers are unlucky, and I will not suffer them in your room.” She picked up the offending feathers, twisted them into a ball, and flung them at the back of the deep old chimney, behind the smouldering logs; and then she produced a chess board, and she and Godfrey began a game with the board on their knees, and played for an hour by firelight. CHAPTER III. “A deadly silence step by step increased, Until it seemed a horrid presence there.” That idea of the Strangways had taken hold of the bride’s fancy. She went into the hall with Godfrey after dinner, and they looked together at the family group. The picture was a bishop’s half-length, turned lengthwise, and the figures showed only the head and shoulders. The girl stood between the two boys, her left arm round her younger brother’s neck. He was a lad of eleven or twelve, in an Eton jacket and broad white collar. The other boy was older than the girl, and was dressed in dark green corduroy. The heads were masterly, but the picture was uninteresting. “Did you ever see three faces with so little fascination among the three?” asked Godfrey. “The boys look arrant cubs; the girl has the makings of a handsome woman, but the lines of her mouth and chin have firmness enough for forty, and yet she could hardly have been over fifteen when that picture was painted.” “She has a lovely throat and lovely shoulders.” “Yes, the painter has made the most of those.” “And she has fine eyes.” “Fine as to colour and shape, but as cold as a Toledo blade—and as dangerous. I pity her husband.” “That must be a waste of pity. If he had been good to her she would not have run away from him.” “I am not sure of that. A woman with that mouth and chin would go her own gate if she trampled upon bleeding hearts. I wonder your father keeps these shadows of a vanished race.” “He would not part with them for worlds. They are like the peacock’s feathers that he _will_ bring indoors. I sometimes think he has a fancy for unlucky things. He says that as we have no ancestors of our own—to speak of—I suppose we must _have_ ancestors, for everybody must have come down from Adam somehow——” “Naturally, or from Adam’s ancestor, the common progenitor of the Darwinian thesis.”