“You’re the only two people I really know intimately,” Marie said; “if you refuse, you’ll spoil it all.  In fact I don’t believe I can have a man to dinner alone without exciting Mr. and Mrs. Hall Porter.”

When she uttered this little vain thing, she laughed and looked in the glass and patted her hair.

“I’ll come,” Julia promised.

As Marie Kerr came out of her bedroom and proceeded down the corridor to inspect the table arrangements, she was a pretty picture of all that a well-dressed, happy, healthy young woman should be.  She paused by the door of the erstwhile dressing-room to look in on the two elder children, then entered the dining-room.  Spotless napery and most of the wedding-present silver equipped the table, as it used to do in the early days of her marriage.  Between the candlesticks were clusters of violets.  A bright wood fire burned upon the hearth, but the golden-brown curtains were not yet drawn upon the evening.  The golden-brown carpet, newly cleaned, was speckless again.  Marie moved about, improving on the table arrangements, and the hands which touched this or that into better design were little, slim and white.  The finger nails had regained their tapering prettiness.  And as she smiled with pleasure, between her lips an unblemished row of teeth showed.  She wore black, to her mother’s memory, but her gown was the last word in cut and contour; it opened in a long V to show her plump white neck; underneath the filmy bodice a hint of mauve ribbons gleamed.  In her ears slender earrings twinkled.  They were amethyst, and had been her mother’s.  She had put them on for the first time that evening as she dressed, because, regarding herself earnestly in the glass, there had risen up over her shoulder, for no reason whatever, the sleek pale face of the manicure girl, who wore emeralds in her ears.  And when she had clipped them on she was thrilled; they gave her a distinctive, a resolute charm.  She could smile at herself again in that glass, at the colour and light and verve which had come back to her.  The face pictured there had all the roundness, the softness and pinkiness of the face of the bride Marie, who had waked and looked therein on wonderful mornings, but it held more than the face of Marie the bride.  It was strong; it had firmness and judgment and humour.  It was no fool of a face.  Yet, as the wisest and strongest of women can delight in vanities, so Marie delighted in the earrings which she wore to-night, as an inspiration, for the first time.

From her dining-room Marie went to the sitting-room, rosy in the light of another wood fire.  Every day now she used her sitting-room.  Tea was brought to her there, placed at her elbow as she sat in a cosy chair before the fire, and she drank it at leisure—­while the maid gave the children their meal in the dining-room.  In that chair by the fire, all the spring, Marie had read the new books, for she could afford to pay a library subscription.  In that chair, as she rested,