were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like
lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as
she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the
brightness of the perfect little room. It had been cut off from the
wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course
of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and
tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather,
the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past
existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve
perfectly new events.

The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that
had found its way throughout the castle. The mirrors were dark with
the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal,
the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present
domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas
wreaths. No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to
flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their
legends impatiently by.

The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from
the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she
had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer
up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence
alone set her free. Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying,
whirling. The circles the event of her marriage had originally
created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for
them now but to scatter. The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was
narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of
the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the
thing was a stone.

"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging
chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free." Hadn't she
wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still
wore her bonds and moved with a ball.

As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after
seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had
breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to
London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of
liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed
by it, and free.