The winter went on, and went by. March had come, with its chilling winds
and cheering sun, its raw certainty and its sweet promise—like a hoydenish girl
of thirteen, whom we endure and even admire, in faith of the future.

It was evening, and Mrs. Livingstone's drawing-rooms were moonily lighted
by hanging lamps with alabaster shades. In the boudoir at the end of the suite
of apartments sat the lady herself, deep in a game of chess with Dr. Luttrell.
In the next room, Francia, nervous, half-unwilling, and yet not quite unpleased,
listened to the low-voiced conversation of Mr. Chilton, while the master of the
house, dozing in an arm-chair near at hand, played propriety to the tête-à-tête.

In the drawing-room beyond, Neria, at the piano, softly played “O Bel
Alma;” and Percy, standing beside her, improvised a dreamy accompaniment.

But the story that the musician told, the question that he asked, and the tender,
mournful denial that Neria returned to his petition, are not now our

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concern. These are of the secrets that the angels keep and men do but guess.
Let us rather watch the far from angelic game so skilfully played in the boudoir.

“Check!” said Dr. Luttrell; and Claudia, who had been dreaming over her
game, suddenly found both king and queen menaced by an audacious knight,
who had quietly approached, under cover of a manœuvre for the capture of a
pawn.

“O, but I can't lose my queen!” exclaimed Mrs. Livingstone, examining
the situation with dismay.

Dr. Luttrell silently leaned back in his chair and watched her. From between
his half-closed eyelids gleamed strange green and yellow lights, flashing,
sparkling, changing, like the great diamond on his breast. His thin lips smiled;
but it was not a smile pleasant to look upon.

“Can you save her?” asked he, quietly, when Claudia had gone over every
possible combination of her few pieces for the twentieth time, and at last placed
a reluctant finger upon the king.

“No; but the game is lost. How could I have been so stupid?”

“`Whom the gods doom,' etc.—it was fated that I should conquer, and it
would have been useless for you to resist, had you been ever so diligent in your
efforts.”

“You are a fatalist, then?”

“Are not you?”

“No, I will not give up my free will. In this case, if I had chosen to attend
to my game, I should not have lost it.”

“It was fated you should not choose to attend to it. It is very easy to reason
after the event.”

“But, warned by experience, the next game we play I will play with such
care as to thwart fate, if she has decreed another stupidity on my part.”

“Then you will again be the servant of fate, who will have decreed just the
pains you take to thwart her.”

“This is fearful,” exclaimed Claudia, passionately; “this idea that, will as
we may, struggle as we may, we are blindly hurried on by an unknown power,
perhaps to good, perhaps to evil—at any rate toward a hidden end. What becomes
of moral responsibility, of conscience, of any effort toward self-conquest?”

“They go down before the iron keel of destiny, who bears us on, resisting
or unresisting, blind or open-eyed, to what you truly call the hidden end.”

“Then why should men be punished for crime?”

“They should not. There is no crime. A man does that to which his temperament
impels him—that which his destiny has pre-ordained from the beginning.
He is no more accountable for the results than is this bit of ivory for
your lost game.”

He fillipped the captured queen as he spoke, and her head rolled across the
board and dropped at his feet.

Claudia put aside his apology with a smile, and said:

“Like her mistress, she feels that in losing the game she loses all. She has
escaped destiny now, at any rate.”

“No, for destiny decreed that she should thus fall; also has decreed that, in
spite of her attempt at self-destruction, she should be restored to all her former
beauty and usefulness,” said Dr. Luttrell, as he smilingly put the broken piece
in his pocket.

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Claudia looked at him with flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes.

“But this matter of destiny,” said she. “Are you resigned to be thus blindly
impelled hither and thither, and to feel all effort and resistance a useless struggle?
Does not this belief deprive you of all interest in life?”

“Not at all. Life to me is an interesting novel, of which I am the hero.
Fate turns the pages, and I read as fast as I am permitted. It is far less trouble
and much more exciting than your idea of writing the book yourself. Authorship
is not my rôle.”

“At least you should never be angry with those who disappoint or thwart
you,” said Claudia, in a low voice.

“To the philosopher, disappointment is a word without value or meaning,” returned
the other. “It is folly to try to guess what is written on the other side of
the page; but if you will do so, and find you have guessed wrong, why, there is an
end of it—why be disappointed? What must be, will be; and why vex yourself
by quarrelling with destiny? When you chose to marry Mr. Livingstone instead
of me, you thought you decided for yourself; but you did not, and I knew you
did not, and so felt neither anger nor sorrow; neither blamed you nor loved you
the less, for I knew that you accepted this necessity of fate as unwillingly as I
did. I knew, too, that this marriage ceremony would prove no solvent to the
secret affinity which must forever bind our souls together, let our tongues belie
it as they may.”

He fixed his gleaming eyes on Claudia's face.

She returned the look defiantly.

“You have no right to say that,” replied she. “Since I was married I have
never spoken a word to you that should prove that I remembered—”

“Nor I to you; but have you not known it?”

“No,” said Claudia, desperately.

Luttrell smiled.

“Say no, if you will, but do not try to think no,” returned he, quietly, “for
nothing is so weakening as self-deception.”

“But I will not—you shall not—I, at least, am no fatalist, and will not have
my free will thus quietly taken out of my hands,” persisted Claudia. “I do
not choose to remember or to know more than that Dr. Luttrell and his wife
are pleasant acquaintances of Mr. and Mrs. Livingstone.”

Dr. Luttrell smiled and bowed, hiding his shining eyes with their drooping
lids.

Claudia waited for denial, for argument; but none came. She nervously replaced
the chessmen in their box, and glanced toward her late adversary. His
face wore an expression of regret, of mortification, perhaps, but he did not raise
his eyes.

“I should have said friends, instead of acquaintances,” said she, softly.

“The first is the better word,” replied Luttrell, coldly.

“Then you do not wish me for a friend,” said Claudia, wounded beyond her
self-possession.

“I do not believe in friendship,” returned Luttrell; “we have acquaintances
more or less intimate; we have passions and affinities; but friendship is to me
a word without meaning.”

“You are cynical,” said Claudia, bitterly.

“Not at all; I am philosophical, and it is one of my philosophies to talk as

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little as may be of myself, or of my own experiences. Do you notice how heavily
the air of these rooms is charged with electricity?”

Claudia glanced at him inquiringly.

“I mean the moral atmosphere. There is enough passion, intrigue, hope,
despair, restlessness circling about our heads to furnish matter for a score of
romances.”

Claudia slightly moved her position so as to command a view of the drawing-rooms.

It was the moment when Percy and Neria, standing hand in hand, looked farewell
into each others' eyes. Rafe Chilton had drawn his chair close to Francia's
side, and while toying with her fan, murmured behind it words to which she listened
with blushing, half-averted face and down-dropped eyes.

Mr. Livingstone, aroused from his nap, studied the stock-list with frowning
brow and muttering lips.

Unseen by all, Mr. Vaughn and Fergus Murray stood just within the doorway,
the keen eyes of each taking in the tout ensemble of the scene, and each
drawing from it his own conclusions.

“I see,” said Claudia, in a low voice; and rising, she went to greet her
guests, and to break up the too obvious tête-a-tête between Francia and a man
whom she knew both her uncle and her brother disapproved.