“I don’t want to judge,” Rose rejoined quietly; “father is very bitter against divorce; he thinks it a menace to the national existence, and I know I think always as he does and--perhaps I’m hard, Robert;” as she spoke she looked at him appealingly, resting her slender, ungloved hand on the easel beside Margaret’s portrait; her whole attitude was one of regret, of reluctance. “I shouldn’t like to speak of it too often,” he said in a low voice, “as it stands--in the bare aspect that we see it--Margaret’s plain justification is lost in what we know to be her wild determination to be happy at any price.” Rose sighed. His words revealed her own thought, she knew that Margaret sought divorce to marry Fox; it was hideous to her, unpardonable, and Fox? She was silent, looking at the pictured face, seeing its mystical beauty, that weird suggestion of an unhappy fate which seemed to shadow its wild loveliness. Allestree had only dimly conveyed it, but Rose’s memory supplied the details. No wonder that men fell under her spell; there was a charm as subtle as it was absolute in her whole personality. “Ah, well,” Rose said at last, “it is natural--she is wonderful.” She had almost forgotten Allestree, so absorbed was she in her own thoughts; and he saw her emotion and raged again at the thought of it. With a sudden impulse he bent and kissed the hand upon the easel. Rose started violently and blushed with painful emotion. “Robert!” she exclaimed reproachfully. “Can I say nothing?” he replied with passion; “must I stand by like a mute and let my happiness, my love, my life slip away from me? Rose, you ask too much!” “I’m so sorry!” she said simply, “now I must go and--and I hate to seem unkind, Robert!” Their eyes met with the shock of natural feeling and his face blanched. “Of course I know it’s useless, Rose, I’ve always known it, but--well, I had to speak, and you’ll have to forgive me for it!” She smiled faintly. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said gently, “and I must go home to meet father anyway. Won’t you come with me, Robert?” Without a word he laid down his brushes and the two went down the old stairs together, each miserable enough in different ways; the man bitterly rebellious, the girl resolutely enduring with a self repression that suggested her father in her. XVIII THAT very day Judge Temple violated his usual custom and did not come home promptly after court adjourned. The hour came and passed and he had not appeared.