w it. And something more.
Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the
unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put
it in a rare moment of self-revelation, "love is the best thing this
queer old world of ours has to offer." The portrait on the easel was
that of a woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed
of its fulfilment.

Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it
from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork,
and that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.

"Good likeness, don't you think?"

Lady Arabella's snapping speech broke the silence.

"It's rather more than that, isn't it?" said Magda. "How did you seduce
Michael Quarrington? I thought"--for an instant her voice wavered, then
steadied again--"I thought he was abroad."

"He was. At the present moment he's at the Hermitage."

"_Here_?"

Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the
wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it
milk-white. Michael . . . _here_! She felt her heart beating in great
suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were
here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not
hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope.
Perhaps--perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!

And then she heard Lady Arabella's voice breaking across the riot of
emotion which stirred within her.

"Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It's
for you, the portrait. I thought you'd like to have it when you haven't
got the original any longer."

Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
apprehensive.

"What do you mean?" she said anxiously. "You're--you're not ill,
Marraine?"

"Ill? No. But I'm over seventy. And after seventy you've had your
allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that's an extra. And whether
fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I've nothing to grumble at. I've
_lived_, not vegetated--and I've had a very good time, too." She paused,
then added slowly: "Though I've missed the best."

Magda slipped her hand into the old woman's thin, wrinkled one with a
quick gesture of understanding, and a little s