t profits and
wages."

She lifted one arm above her head and rested her cheek against it. Otto
von Arno during his brief period of fondness had been used to call his
wife "his Scandinavian goddess." She was of the goddess type, tall,
fair-faced and stately, with thick, pale gold hair, and brown lashes
lifted in level lines from steady, deep gray eyes. "Pretty" seemed too
small a word for such a woman, yet "beautiful" conveys a hint of
tenderness; and Mrs. von Arno's face--it might be because of those steady
eyes--was rather a hard face, notwithstanding the soft pink and white of
her skin, and even the dimples that dented her cheek when she smiled.

Now she was not smiling. The air was heavy with the damp chill of early
spring; and as the countess absently surveyed a gravel-walk bordered by
limp brown grasses and a line of trees dripping last night's frost through
the fog, she saw a woman's figure emerge from the shadows and come slowly
up the walk. She was poorly dressed, and walked to the kitchen-door, where
the countess could see her carefully wipe her feet before rapping.

"That must be Bailey's wife," she thought: "I saw her waiting for him
yesterday when he came round to the shops for work.--William, my friend,
you are a nuisance."

With this comment she went to the kitchen. Lettice, the maid-of-all-work,
was frying cakes in solitude. "Mrs. Greymer had taken Mrs. Bailey into the
library," she told the countess with significant inflections.

The latter went to the library. It was a tiny, red-frescoed room fitted up
in black walnut. There were plants in the bay-window: Mrs. Greymer stood
among them, her soft gray wrapper falling in straight and ample folds
about her slender figure. Her face was turned toward the countess; a
loosened lock of black hair brushed the blue vein on her cheek; she held
some lilies-of-the-valley in her hand, and the gold of her wedding-ring
shone against the dark green leaves.

"She looks like one of Fra Angelico's saints," thought the countess: "the
crimson lights are good too."

She stood unnoticed in the doorway, leisurely admiring the picture. Mrs.
Bailey sat in the writing-chair on her right. Once, probably, she had been
a pretty woman, and she still had abundant wavy brown hair and large
dark-blue eyes with curling lashes; but she was too thin and faded and
narrow-chested for any prettiness now. Her calico gown was unstarched,
though scrupulously clean: she wore a thin blue-and-