e said, not only to offer her his
warmest congratulations, but to express his regret that a great work of
art was to leave England.

Lady Treffinger looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment. Surely, she
said, she had been careful to select the best of the pictures for the
X--- gallery, in accordance with Sir Hugh Treffinger's wishes.

"And did he--pardon me, Lady Treffinger, but in mercy set my mind at
rest--did he or did he not express any definite wish concerning this one
picture, which to me seems worth all the others, unfinished as it is?"

Lady Treffinger paled perceptibly, but it was not the pallor of
confusion. When she spoke there was a sharp tremor in her smooth voice,
the edge of a resentment that tore her like pain. "I think his man has
some such impression, but I believe it to be utterly unfounded. I cannot
find that he ever expressed any wish concerning the disposition of the
picture to any of his friends. Unfortunately, Sir Hugh was not always
discreet in his remarks to his servants."

"Captain Gresham, Lady Ellingham, and Miss Ellingham," announced a
servant, appearing at the door.

There was a murmur in the hall, and MacMaster greeted the smiling
Captain and his aunt as he bowed himself out.

To all intents and purposes the _Marriage of Phaedra_ was already
entombed in a vague continent in the Pacific, somewhere on the other
side of the world.

A Wagner Matinee

I received one morning a letter, written in pale ink on glassy,
blue-lined notepaper, and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraska
village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had
been carried for some days in a coat pocket that was none too clean, was
from my Uncle Howard and informed me that his wife had been left a small
legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it would
be necessary for her to go to Boston to attend to the settling of
the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station and render her
whatever services might be necessary. On examining the date indicated
as that of her arrival I found it no later than tomorrow. He had
characteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home for
a day, I must have missed the good woman altogether.

The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure,
at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf of
recollection so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from my
hand, I felt suddenly a stran