“Robert! what a disgusting expression. But of course you know the tales of the Black Cabinet and that our embassy dispatches were tampered with.” “Now you’re in your element, mother; you love a mystery!” The old woman put her hand on his head, stroking back his hair with a fond gesture. “Tell me about Rose,” she said, watching him narrowly, with all her maternal intuition alive; “did she sit patiently--and will your portrait please you? That’s really the only question; every one else is sure to be pleased.” He shook his head. “I can’t get it to please me,” he replied quietly; “after all, Rose’s beauty is less a question of feature than I thought. I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico--as it is, it will never look like her.” “Nonsense! Rose is very human; don’t put her on too high a pedestal, my dear,” his mother counselled wisely; “you are too sensitive, too imaginative. Fox would never make the mistake of treating a woman like a saint on a pillar!” Allestree made an inarticulate sound and rose also. “Fox--no!” he said a little bitterly; “Fox could make love to Saint Catherine without offending her; he’s one of the men whom women love!” His mother smiled but made no reply; at heart she was fully aware that there was much truth in the saying. Old as she was, she felt the indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of her early lover. As she stood looking at the fire in silence the shrewd old woman reflected that the ways of Providence are inscrutably hard to divine and that, after all, it is sometimes fatal to thrust one’s hand into the fire to save a brand from the burning. V THAT Mrs. Allestree’s divinations were not very far short of the truth, or unlikely of fulfilment, would have been apparent to her could she have looked in, a few weeks later, on Rose and Fox together in Judge Temple’s fine old library. In the judge’s estimation the library was the one spot of the house, the sanctum sanctorum, and its noble book-lined walls imparted a warmth of color and an erudite dignity to a room of fine proportions lighted by an immense southern bow-window which overlooked the walled garden, where Rose had cultivated every flower which blooms in summer and every evergreen vine and ilex which lives in winter.