“A Shakespearean Club!” and Judge Hildreth smiled incredulously.  “Why, my dear, I never knew you and the immortal Will had much affinity for each other!”

“Oh, of course it is more for the prestige of the thing.  Mrs. Leighton said the General assured her you would never find leisure for it, but I said I would promise for you.  It is only one evening a week you know.  She thinks we Americans retire far too early from the enjoyments of life in favor of our children, and I believe she is right.  I certainly do not feel myself in the sere and yellow,” and Mrs. Judge Hildreth regarded herself complacently in the long mirror before which she stood.  “You will manage to make the time, Lawrence?”

“What other answer but ‘yes’ can Petruchio make to ’the prettiest Kate in Christendom’?” replied the Judge, bowing gallantly to the face in the mirror as he came up and stood beside his wife.  It was a handsome face but there was a hardness about it, and the lines around the mouth which bespoke an indomitable will, had deepened with the years.

“Only one evening a week, Kate, but you thought that too much of a tax just now.”

“How absurd you are, Lawrence!  When shall I make you understand that there are sacrifices that must be made.  We owe a duty to society.  We cannot afford to let ourselves drop wholly out of the world.”

A little later Judge Hildreth entered his library with a heavy sigh.  He had attained the ends he had striven for, he was respected alike in the church and the world, he held a high and lucrative position, he had a well appointed home, over which his handsome wife presided with dignity and grace, and yet, as he took his seat before his desk in the lofty room whose shelves were lined with gems of thought in fragrant, costly bindings, life seemed to have missed its sweetness to Lawrence Hildreth.

Evadne’s words haunted him, and, like an accusing angel, the letter which still lay hidden under the mass of papers in the drawer which he never opened, seemed to look at him reproachfully.

“A sister of Jesus Christ.”  Sisters and brothers lived together.  Was it possible that Jesus Christ could be in this house,—­this very room?  The idea was appalling.  He was familiar with the truism that God was everywhere, but he had never really believed it; and, as the years passed, he had found it convenient to remove him to a shadowy distance in space, less likely to interfere with modern business methods.  Jesus Christ, enshrined in a far off glory among his angels, appealed to the decorum of his religious sentiment; but Jesus Christ, face to face, to be reckoned with in the practical details of honesty and fair dealing; that was a different matter.  And this was the violation of a dead man’s trust, who had put everything in his power because he had faith in him!

He saw again the young brother, handsome, easy-going to a fault, but with a sense of honor so fine as to shrink in indignation from the slightest breath of shame; read again the closing words of the farewell letter which he had read for the first time on the day now so long ago, which he would have given worlds to recall, and which, from out the shadowy recesses of eternity, laughed at his futile wish.