“It was excellent,” Rose replied soberly, taking the chair Allestree pushed forward for her; “she really is a beauty, Gerty; I like to say that to show myself just and broad-minded!” “That makes two pictures Robert has finished this winter;--yours and the serpent’s, as I call Lily Osborne, and now he is nearly done with Margaret.” “Not many, if I’m to make a living by it, Gerty,” Allestree retorted smiling. “A living? Goodness, if I could only get your prices!” Gerty raised her eyes and hands to heaven; “I’m a poor thing worth a dollar an hour and expenses.” “Raise your rates, Gerty, you’re indispensable,” said Rose. “Indeed I’m not, there are lots of others waiting for my shoes. Good-bye, dear children; I’m going now to write two dozen notes, pay fifty bills and interview a caterer and a florist,” and she kissed her hand to them as she withdrew, mischievously aware that she had coaxed Rose into an interview with Allestree; like Judge Temple, Gerty thought happiness lay in this direction and in no other. As she disappeared Rose left her chair and went to look at Margaret’s portrait with dreamy eyes. “I must go, too,” she said, “I only stopped for a moment on my way. I’ve been riding by the river and through the White Lot. I kept thinking of those lines, do you remember them, Robert?-- “‘Hast thou seen by daisied leas, And by rivers flowing Lilac-ringlets which the breeze Loosens, lightly blowing!’” “I’ve been longing to be out all day myself,” he said soberly enough, “to see the ‘lilac-ringlets,’ but I must finish this; in some way I have grown to believe that Margaret will never again be quite the Margaret we have known so long. I wanted to be sure of this expression.” Rose looked again at the picture, and her lip quivered a little in spite of herself. “Yes,” she replied simply, “I understand you; I don’t believe you will see that old look again. I feel--” she paused, choosing her words, her eyes darkening with an emotion which she was controlling with an effort--“I feel as if Margaret had died, that some one else would come back to us, some one we do not know!” It was a striking fact that at the very moment when Margaret believed that she was about to achieve happiness, her friends regarded her as approaching its final eclipse. One moment of detachment, of the external view-point, would open an appalling vista to many a human soul, for it is true that those whom the gods desire to destroy they first make blind. As Rose voiced this thought Allestree averted his eyes; he felt the keenest regret for his thoughtless words; Gertrude English’s unmerciful tongue had torn away the veil from Rose’s emotions. He would have been more than human had not his heart burned with a sudden fierce anger. What right had Fox, who had so much, to step in between him and the girl he loved,--to wound a heart so delicate, so sensitive, so tender as hers? “I pity Margaret!” he said sharply, with some bitterness, “but he who sows the tares--”