His cousin smiled coldly. “My dear fellow, it was for that Margaret married him,” he retorted, “that and his money. When I see her, as I saw her the other night, the most beautiful and charming creature, in a miracle of a costume,--she knows how to wear clothes that make pictures,--I longed to say to her:-- “‘You that have so fair parts of woman on you, Have too a woman’s heart: which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty.’” “Pshaw, you dreamer of dreams and painter of pictures; it’s a hollow show, an ugly travesty! What has a man like White to give such a woman? The husks of the prodigal!” Fox’s luminous dark eyes kindled with anger, “when I see him--” he checked himself abruptly and walked on rapidly, his long, easy stride carrying him ahead of Allestree. “Pearls before swine!” he muttered to himself after a moment, plunging his hands into his pockets and relapsing into an angry silence. They walked on at a smart pace, having occasionally to thread their way single file through the increasing throng, as the long blocks slipped behind them and they approached the heart of business life near Fourteenth Street. When they came together again after such a separation, Allestree asked Fox if he could come home with him to dine but Fox declined rather curtly, pleading an early evening engagement, and Allestree said no more, having his own surmises as to the nature of that engagement, and being somewhat guiltily aware that he was not an entirely involuntary party to his mother’s conspiracy to draw Fox away from a dangerous attraction. Both men were, in fact, conscious that a discord had arisen in their usually confidential relations, and neither of them desired to broach any subject which would add acrimony to the conversation; with the usual masculine instinct of self-defense, therefore, they relapsed into silence. However, at the entrance of a large hotel on the corner, their hurried progress was interrupted to give way to a visitor who was crossing the wide pavement to her carriage, escorted by one of the attendants and a footman. The light from the lobby, brilliantly illuminating the space beneath the awning, outlined her as sharply as a silhouette against the darkness, and her figure,--she was a young and slender girl,--was thrown into high relief; the quiet elegance of her dress, the sables on her shoulders, as well as the large picture hat which framed her face, being merely superfluous accessories to beauty of a type at once unusual and spiritual.