ked as if it had seen much
service. On the wall to the left of the desk, reaching almost from floor
to ceiling, was a large full-length portrait of a woman, magnificently
framed, exquisitely painted, and signed with the name of Boucher. It was
Percy's mother.

Marguerite knew very little about her, except that she had died abroad,
ailing in body as well as in mind, while Percy was still a lad. She must
have been a very beautiful woman once, when Boucher painted her, and as
Marguerite looked at the portrait, she could not but be struck by the
extraordinary resemblance which must have existed between mother and
son. There was the same low, square forehead, crowned with thick, fair
hair, smooth and heavy; the same deep-set, somewhat lazy blue eyes
beneath firmly marked, straight brows; and in those eyes there was the
same intensity behind that apparent laziness, the same latent passion
which used to light up Percy's face in the olden days before his
marriage, and which Marguerite had again noted, last night at dawn, when
she had come quite close to him, and had allowed a note of tenderness to
creep into her voice.

Marguerite studied the portrait, for it interested her: after that she
turned and looked again at the ponderous desk. It was covered with a
mass of papers, all neatly tied and docketed, which looked like accounts
and receipts arrayed with perfect method. It had never before struck
Marguerite--nor had she, alas! found it worth while to inquire--as to
how Sir Percy, whom all the world had credited with a total lack of
brains, administered the vast fortune which his father had left him.

Since she had entered this neat, orderly room, she had been taken
so much by surprise, that this obvious proof of her husband's strong
business capacities did not cause her more than a passing thought of
wonder. But it also strengthened her in the now certain knowledge that,
with his worldly inanities, his foppish ways, and foolish talk, he was
not only wearing a mask, but was playing a deliberate and studied part.

Marguerite wondered again. Why should he take all this trouble? Why
should he--who was obviously a serious, earnest man--wish to appear
before his fellow-men as an empty-headed nincompoop?

He may have wished to hide his love for a wife who held him in contempt
. . . but surely such an object could have been gained at less sacrifice,
and with far less trouble than constant incessant acting of an unnatural
part.