trust, who would
surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by
the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions,
silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial by comparison
with this.

On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired
that he broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering
reception at the German Court to express a suggestion for her
benefit, that she had better go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit.
She would never get through the season at this rate. Yes, she must
certainly take a holiday, directly after the Academy Private View.

Eve caught at the idea, only she did not wait for the Academy to
open. She went for a fortnight, accompanied by an old servant of the
family, who regarded her mistress's birth as quite a recent event,
to Mrs. Sylvester's cottage in Norfolk.

When Mrs. Lightmark came back to town her face was still pale, but
her brow wore a serener air, and her eyes had lost their look of
apprehension. The woman had arisen triumphant out of the ashes of
her childhood, with a heart determined to know the truth, and to
face it, however bitter it might prove to be. Meanwhile, she would
not judge hastily.

As she drove up Bond Street one day soon after her return to town,
the advertisement of Oswyn's exhibition caught her eye. She would
probably have remembered a name so uncommon if she had only heard it
once, and, as it was, she had heard it several times, and associated
with it, moreover, a certain reticence which could not fail to
arouse a woman's curiosity.

Later, when Mosenthal's card of invitation for the Private View
arrived, she noted the day upon her list of engagements.

On the morning of Oswyn's ordeal, Eve sent a message to her husband,
who was engaged with a model in the studio, to notify to him her
intention of taking the carriage into town later in the afternoon;
to which he had returned a gallant reply, expressing a hope that, if
it would not bore her too much, she would pick him up somewhere and
drive him home. Where and when could he meet her? The reply, "At
Mosenthal's at five o'clock," did not surprise him. He did not
happen to have the vaguest idea as to what was the attraction of the
day at that particular gallery. It might be Burmese landscapes, or
portraits of parrots; it was all one to him. It was extremely
decorous in his wife to affect picture-galleries, and Mosenthal's
place was convenientl