promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?--was one which
his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called
simply for experiment.

So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed.




CHAPTER VII

HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA


It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to
marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of
surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a
tolerably eventful life.

Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little
room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side
until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous
announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the
effect that she was going to the matinée with him that afternoon.

Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in
mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's
voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her
daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick.
What did you say?"