is date
Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet
reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and
visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat
apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half
consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror
opposite.

Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's
proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had
appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his
departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington
hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if
it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There
was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock
of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could
only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to
watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.

Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good
deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more
than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing
part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with
which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently
ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him
had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was
of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and
first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier
thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young
Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on
as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.

Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?

Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American
society--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to
move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the
blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was
not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.
There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;
something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved
it out by staying in America, instead of losing