“With the immortal bonnet?” said Fox laughing, but with a glance which perceived every detail of Rose’s beautiful young face and figure radiant in the sunshine. Margaret saw it; a shudder of perception passed over her and she drew back into her corner of the motor-car with a little sigh of agony, dragged from her very heart, but happily unnoticed. Her whole being rebelled against fate, against submission, against loss! Berkman was still laughing, uncovered, at Rose’s bridle, and Fox sat listening, idly amused. The clear atmosphere cut every detail out,--the low growth of cedars, the sweeping slope of the dun colored hill behind it, the dark ribbon of woods in the hollow where the creek flowed unseen, the long vista of the road which seemed to meet the sky. Margaret called to them. “Good-bye,” she said, “I’m engaged to receive the _canaille_--as Madame de Caillou calls it--at five. Come, Louis, or else we’ll send you to the East Room again.” “The gods forbid!” he exclaimed, and ran to the motor amid more gay laughter. A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was whirled away. IX MARGARET leaned over the glass show-counter in Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop and looked down at the pathetic medley within. Her figure, in its usual elaborate elegance, was in sharp contrast to the dingy surroundings. The fine camel’s-hair shawls hung up behind her, the old velvet curtain with its tapestry border, the moth-eaten furs, the tarnished Mexican sombrero, the ancient horse-pistols, the innumerable curious articles which heaped every corner of the room, down to the chintz curtain, screening the rear end of the shop in a weak-minded and fluttering way, formed a patchwork background. In the case was an ivory fan of antique workmanship which had drifted here at last, carrying with it a history which might frame many a tale, and with it a tortoise-shell comb, with a top eight inches high, some gold link cuff buttons, a string of pearls that had clasped the throat of a beauty in 1776, but lay now, pale and lustreless and forgotten, the price, perhaps, of a week’s lodging or of a grave, God knows! But Margaret was interested in a bracelet set with topaz, still beautiful, still radiant, still warm with a life’s history. She passed the stones to and fro between her slender fingers, pricing them with careless indifference. The romance and the sorrow of it would have touched Rose Temple and sent her shuddering from the purchase. To Margaret they signified nothing but jewels and the value of jewels, for her life of selfish ease, of social prominence, her endless quest for pleasure, had nearly atrophied those finer and more tender emotions of sympathy and love for her fellow creatures.