Over the high wide mantel was one fine old painting which testified both to the extravagance and distinctive taste of the judge’s grandfather, and on the book littered table stood a slender vase filled with roses. There was an exquisite delicacy, a refinement, an atmosphere of culture, even in such minutiæ as these, which gave a detailed charm to the perspective of the entire house. Rose herself sat in a high-backed chair by the open fire, her bright head and slender figure outlined against the dark background, while she listened, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of girlhood, to Fox’s gay, easy talk, his dog, Sandy, lying stretched on the hearthrug between them in the blissful content of physical comfort and the instinctive assurance of safety and friendship which Rose’s presence seemed to increase. To Fox, half the girl’s charm lay in a certain rigid mental uprightness, a clear ethical point of view, which was entirely different from the careless tolerance of the smart set in which he had hitherto almost exclusively moved. Fox had no religion; Rose was devout, and swift in her denunciation of wrong, for she had all the terrible unrelenting standards of youth and the religion of youth which is wont to be the religion of extremes. Her character was indeed just emerging from that raw period of girlhood which is full of passionate beliefs and renunciations as well as a shy pride which can inflict keen mental suffering for a little hurt; a season when the mind is wonderfully receptive and the young, untried spirit full of beautiful inspirations, hopes, and beliefs which are too frequently destined to woeful annihilation in later years. Fox had recently made a great speech, a speech which had filled both the floor and the galleries of the House to suffocation, and even thronged the corridors with spectators who could gain no admittance, yet, while it had thrilled Rose’s pulses with excitement and enthralled her with the spell of its eloquence, her rigid sense of the proprieties had been shocked; she had felt its flowing periods its scornful references to mysteries which seemed to Fox as rotten as they were immaterial, and the fact that she had taken umbrage at phrases of his, which seemed to him sufficiently innocuous to escape all criticism, amused and pleased him. It was a new point of view; he liked to tease her into expressing a shy opinion, or into a sudden outburst of righteous disapproval which brought the color to her cheek and the sparkle to her eye. It delighted him to feel that even disapproving of him she could not hate him, for in their dawning intimacy he found ample assurance of her liking, and the unguarded friendliness of her feeling showed in her eagerness to win him to her side on any mooted question.