The children crossed her mind only occasionally; Estelle was more and more like her father every day, and as for the baby? Margaret had only vague conceptions of his possibilities; she had seen but little of him since his birth, except in his nurse’s arms, but she had recognized that odious likeness to the Whites. Of course old Mrs. White would take them; she adored them, and Margaret felt that she knew more about them than she did. After a while when they grew up--but Margaret could not afford to dwell upon it. They were associated with her misery, her captivity, as she chose to call it, and she could not love them; she shrank, indeed, from the thought of them, and the responsibility that their existence had thrust upon her, as so many links in her chains. She returned from her interview with Allestree in a curious frame of mind. Her unreasonable discourtesy to the Vermilions and Mrs. Wingfield--people who really only hovered on the edge of her horizon--her insistent attacks upon Allestree’s sore heart, had all been prompted by her own feverish misery. Once alone in her room she went to the mirror, and holding up one of the candelabra, gazed long and fixedly at her own reflection, asking over again the question she had asked herself on the night of Mrs. O’Neal’s dinner. Had she lost her beauty? Was the potency of her spell destroyed in some mysterious way? Hideous thought--was she growing old? She saw, indeed, all that she had seen in Allestree’s mirror, and more; the misery that looked out of her own eyes frightened her, and there were more delicate lines than there had been on that previous occasion, or else the light was stronger. This was the reason then of the senseless stare of Miss Vermilion’s china blue eyes--Margaret wondered vaguely why girls of that sort always had china blue eyes? She set down the candelabrum, and sinking into a chair by the open fire began to brood over her troubles, forgetful that she must be dressed soon for her own reception; it was the night when her weekly guests assembled at those already famous evenings. Her thoughts reverted to Fox; the remembrance of his love for her was like the sudden fragrance of violets in a desolate place. He had loved her; it never seemed possible for a moment that a word, a sign, could not reanimate his passion, as a breath of air will strike fire from the smouldering embers. Now, too, she could appreciate and understand his love; she was no longer a raw slip of a girl or a stiff little Puritan like Rose Temple! But she knew the barrier which existed between them; never by a word or a sign had Fox trespassed against White’s hospitality, he would never urge her to desert her husband, but if she were free--