uthfulness. That suspicion of masculinity
observable in her when she became Reardon's wife impressed one now only
as the consummate grace of a perfectly-built woman. You saw that at
forty, at fifty, she would be one of the stateliest of dames. When she
bent her head towards the person with whom she spoke, it was an act of
queenly favour. Her words were uttered with just enough deliberation to
give them the value of an opinion; she smiled with a delicious shade
of irony; her glance intimated that nothing could be too subtle for her
understanding.

The guests numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant. Two of
the men were about Jasper's age, and they had already made their mark
in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating fame, spirally
crescent. The three of the stronger sex were excellent modern types,
with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and good broad brows.

The novelist at one point put an interesting question to Amy.

'Is it true that Fadge is leaving The Current?'

'It is rumoured, I believe.'

'Going to one of the quarterlies, they say,' remarked a lady. 'He is
getting terribly autocratic. Have you heard the delightful story of
his telling Mr Rowland to persevere, as his last work was one of
considerable promise?'

Mr Rowland was a man who had made a merited reputation when Fadge was
still on the lower rungs of journalism. Amy smiled and told another
anecdote of the great editor. Whilst speaking, she caught her husband's
eye, and perhaps this was the reason why her story, at the close, seemed
rather amiably pointless--not a common fault when she narrated.

When the ladies had withdrawn, one of the younger men, in a conversation
about a certain magazine, remarked:

'Thomas always maintains that it was killed by that solemn old stager,
Alfred Yule. By the way, he is dead himself, I hear.'

Jasper bent forward.

'Alfred Yule is dead?'

'So Jedwood told me this morning. He died in the country somewhere,
blind and fallen on evil days, poor old fellow.'

All the guests were ignorant of any tie of kindred between their host
and the man spoken of.

'I believe,' said the novelist, 'that he had a clever daughter who used
to do all the work he signed. That used to be a current bit of scandal
in Fadge's circle.'

'Oh, there was much exaggeration in that,' remarked Jasper, blandly.
'His daughter assisted him, doubtless, but in quite a legitimate way.
One used to see her at the Museum.'

Th