ther oil painting of young James taken at the age of twelve, wearing
a sailor suit and the surly expression of an active boy detained within
walls while other boys were shouting in the park. Beside it was a
water color of Janet at the age of two, even then startlingly like her
grandmother. She had been Mrs. Oglethorpe's favorite descendant until
the resemblance had become too accentuated by modern divagations.

Clavering did not extend himself on the sofa tonight but drew a leather
chair (built for Mr. Oglethorpe) to the small coal grate, which
inadequately warmed the large room. Mrs. Oglethorpe, like many women
of her generation, never indulged her backbone save in bed, and she
seated herself in her own massive upright chair not too close to the
fire. She had made a concession to time in the rest of the house,
which was lighted by electricity, but the gas remained in her own
suite, and the room was lit by faint yellow flames struggling through
the ground-glass globes of four-side brackets. The light from the
coals was stronger, and as it fell on her bony austere old face with
its projecting beak, Clavering reflected that she needed only a
broomstick. He really loved her, but a trained faculty works as
impersonally as a camera.

He smoked in silence and Mrs. Oglethorpe stared into the fire. She,
too, was fond of her cigar, but tonight she had shaken her head as
Hawkins had offered the box, after passing the coffee. Her face no
longer looked sardonic, but relaxed and sad. Clavering regarded her
with uneasy sympathy. Would it be possible to divert her mind?

"Lady Jane," he began.

"I wish you would call me Jane tonight. I wouldn't feel so intolerably
old."

"Of course I'll call you Jane, but you'll never be old. What skeleton
have you been exhuming?" He was in for it and might as well give her a
lead.

"It's Mary Ogden," she said abruptly and harshly.

"Oh--I wondered how you felt about it. You certainly have been
splendid----"

"What else could I do? She was the most intimate friend of my youth,
the only woman I ever had any real affection for. I had already seen
her and recognized her. I suppose she has told you that I went there
and that she treated me like an intruding stranger. But I knew she
must have some good reason for it--possibly that she was here on some
secret political mission and had sworn to preserve her incognito. I
knew she had been mixed up in politics more than once. I th