n way and I shall take mine. You are good enough to give me
plenty of rope, and I should be uncivil indeed if I commented on the
length of yours."

Mrs. Romaine had been moving restlessly to and fro: she now stood still,
on the hearthrug, her hands clasped before her, her face turned
attentively towards her brother. Evidently she was struck by his words.

"If you would speak out," she said at last, her smooth voice vibrating
as if he had touched some chord of passion which was usually hushed to
silence, "I should know better what you mean. You deal too much in hints
and insinuations. You have said things of this sort before. I must know
what you mean."

"Come, Rosy," said Oliver, rising from his low seat and confronting her,
"don't be so tragic--so intense. Plump little women like you shouldn't
go in for tragedy. Smile, Rosy; it is your _metier_ to smile. You have
won a good many games by smiling. You must smile on now--to the bitter
end."

He smiled himself as he looked at her--an unpleasant smile, with thin
lips drawn back from white sharp looking teeth, which gave him the air
of a snarling dog. Mrs. Romaine's face belied his words. It was tragic
enough, intense enough, for a woman who had known mortal agony; the
suggestion of placidity usually given by her smiling lips and rounded
unwrinkled cheeks had disappeared; she might have stood for an
impersonation of sorrow and despair. Oliver's mocking voice recalled her
to herself.

"A very good pose, Rosalind. The Tragic Muse indeed. Are you going to
rival Ethel Kenyon? I am afraid it is rather late for you to go on the
stage, that's all. Let me see: you have touched forty, have you not? I
would acknowledge only thirty-nine if I were you. There is more than a
year's difference between thirty-nine and forty."

The strained muscles of her face relaxed: she made a little impatient
gesture with her hands, then turned to the fireplace, and with one arm
upon the mantelpiece, looked down into the fire.

"You drive me nearly mad sometimes, Oliver," she said, in a low,
passionate voice, "by your habit of saying only half a thing at a time.
I know well enough that you are remonstrating with me now: that you
disapprove of something--and will not tell me what. By and by, if I am
in trouble or perplexity, you will turn round upon me and say that you
warned me--told me that you disapproved--or something of that sort. You
always do it, and it is not fair. Innuendoes are not warn