there flash into my mind the memory of an
old portrait of a Florentine nobleman in a loan collection last winter.
I can't remember the name of the painter--I am not sure that it was
known--but this photograph might have been taken from the painting.
There was the same imaginative sadness in both faces, the same haunting
beauty of feature, and one surmised that there must be the same rich
darkness of colouring. The only striking difference was that the man in
the photograph looked much older than the original of the portrait, and
I remembered that the lady who had engaged me was the second wife of Mr.
Vanderbridge and some ten or fifteen years younger, I had heard, than
her husband.

"Have you ever seen a more wonderful face?" asked Mrs. Vanderbridge.
"Doesn't he look as if he might have been painted by Titian?"

"Is he really so handsome as that?"

"He is a little older and sadder, that is all. When we were married it
was exactly like him." For an instant she hesitated and then broke out
almost bitterly, "Isn't that a face any woman might fall in love with, a
face any woman--living or dead--would not be willing to give up?"

Poor child, I could see that she was overwrought and needed some one to
talk to, but it seemed queer to me that she should speak so frankly to a
stranger. I wondered why any one so rich and so beautiful should ever be
unhappy--for I had been schooled by poverty to believe that money is the
first essential of happiness--and yet her unhappiness was as evident as
her beauty, or the luxury that enveloped her. At that instant I felt
that I hated Mr. Vanderbridge, for whatever the secret tragedy of their
marriage might be, I instinctively knew that the fault was not on the
side of the wife. She was as sweet and winning as if she were still the
reigning beauty in the academy for young ladies. I knew with a knowledge
deeper than any conviction that she was not to blame, and if she wasn't
to blame, then who under heaven could be at fault except her husband?

In a few minutes a friend came in to tea, and I went upstairs to my
room, and unpacked the blue taffeta dress I had bought for my sister's
wedding. I was still doubtfully regarding it when there was a knock at
my door, and the maid with the sad face came in to bring me a pot of
tea. After she had placed the tray on the table, she stood nervously
twisting a napkin in her hands while she waited for me to leave my
unpacking and sit down in the easy cha