Mrs. Austen unfurled her fan. It was all Honest Injun. She had not a doubt of it and never had. But if she had thought it a Sioux and Comanche story, it would have been the same to her. "I am sorry you did not meet her," Lennox continued. "You might have lent her a hand." "Professionally, you mean?" "Yes." "I might have her sing here," replied Mrs. Austen, who would have seen Cassy hanged first. Lennox considered the picture: Mrs. Austen in the role of shepherdess, herding for Cassy's benefit the flock of sheep that society is. But the picture did not detain him. He stood up. "That would be very good of you. Please tell Margaret I am sorry she has a headache and that I will look in on her to-morrow." No you won't, thought Mrs. Austen, who said: "Yes, do." In a moment, when he had gone, she looked again in the mirror. It showed her a woman who would not steal, unless she could do so undetectably; a woman who would not forge, because she did not know how. Crimes ridiculous or merely terrific she was too shrewd to commit. But there are crimes that the law cannot reach. There are cards, too, that fate may deal. After looking at the woman, she looked at the cards. They were dreamlike. Even so, they needed stacking. Mrs. Austen arranged them carefully, ran them up her sleeve and floated to the room where Margaret waited. As she entered, Margaret turned to her. Her face had that disquieting loveliness which Spanish art gave to the Madonna, the loveliness of flesh eclipsed certainly by the loveliness of the soul, but still flesh, still lovely. At sight of it Mrs. Austen experienced the admiration tinctured with the vitriol of jealousy that some mothers inject. Mrs. Austen had been a belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl, who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs. Austen was blind to it. It was her daughter's physical beauty that she always saw and which, though she was jealous of it, had, she knew, a value, precisely as beauty had a value in Circassia where, before the war, it fetched as much as a hundred Turkish pounds. In New York, where amateurs are keener and beauty is more rare, it may run into millions. Commercially conscious of that, Mrs. Austen felt for the cards and carelessly produced one. "Do you know, I believe we are to have a shower. Your young man got off just in time." Margaret, who had glanced at the prostrate nymph, looked at her upright mother. "Do you mean that Keith has come--and gone?" Mrs. Austen sat down and extracted another card. "My dear, when I went below he was coming in. We----" Margaret, with her usual directness, interrupted. "But he is coming back?" "That depends on you." "On me? How? What do you mean?"