is mind, in a dazed sort of way, came back
on the job. And the first thing it pointed out to him was that Frederica
had undoubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived
together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The
pictures his memory held of his sister, covered no such emotional range
as these four. Did Martin's? It seemed absurd, yet there was a strong
intrinsic probability of it.

Anyway, it was a remark Frederica had made last night that gave him
something to hold on by. Marriage, she had said, was an adventure, the
essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken
in advance could modify. There was no doubt in his mind that marriage
with that girl would be a more wonderful adventure than any one had ever
had in the world.

All right then, perhaps his mind had been right in refusing to take up
the case. The one tremendous question,--would the adventure look
promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?--was one which
his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called
simply for experiment.

So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed.

CHAPTER VII

HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA

It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to
marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of
surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a
tolerably eventful life.

Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little
room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side
until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous
announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the
effect that she was going to the matinee with him that afternoon.

Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in
mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's
voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her
daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick.
What did you say?"

Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married."

But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face,
she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the
fragile figure and hugged it up against herself.

"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it
more gradually. But I never think of things