And now? What had she read in the kindled sympathy of that look at Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,--dared she picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and beauty--beauty such as she had never worn--might be his? Her sore heart throbbed passionately in her bosom. She had expiated her mistake, she had suffered for her fault, she had a right to be happy! She would be happy; it is the eternal cry of the human soul. “Every pitifullest whipster,” says Carlyle, “seeks happiness, a happiness impossible even for the gods.” And Margaret’s wilful soul cried out for happiness; why should it not be hers? She was shackled, it was true, with fetters of her own forging, but--the eager thought of liberty darted through her mind like an arrow--others had been so bound and were now free, others were making new lives out of the old, and the ease with which such ties can be dissolved was not the least of her temptations. Her glance fell suddenly on the child, Estelle, playing soberly with the amethyst beads which she had begged for. The little girl had learned to be quiet; if she was noisy or in the way she was immediately dismissed to the nursery, and she had her lesson by heart; she was making no noise but a soft crooning sound as she fondled the beads. Her hair was flaxen, her face dull and not pretty, her eyes like her father’s. Margaret shuddered and averted her gaze; how cruel that she should look like him! And the baby, only two years old but already like him; she felt it her curse, the retribution of her loveless marriage, that these two living and visible links to bind her to her vows were both like the man she had married without love and without respect, because she could not give up her life and its luxuries to be poor. A marriage with Fox then would have meant the renunciation of everything which seemed to her essential to existence, it would have combined the miseries of cheap living and self-denial, of small and hideous economies, which made her shudder even to contemplate; she had always been a sybarite. Brought up by an extravagant, pleasure-loving mother, by a father who had spent all to live well, Margaret had been unable to conceive anything more horrible than genteel poverty, and White had offered her a dazzling vista of wealth, position, social success. She was very young, raw, untried, and the temptation had been too great.