Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors--the deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of parchment,--parchment itself in several instances,--the light faun and reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of the editions were rare. It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like home,--something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real. The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room. VIII I did not light the candles. The firelight showed through the mica in the stove grate. I sat down by the window and looked out. A full moon shone high and clear above the dark irregular outline of the massed treetops in the woods across the creek, now covered with ice and blanketed with white. The great hemlock branches, crowding close to the house, were drooping, snow-laden. The moonlight, reflected in them, flashed diamond dust from the upper branches; beneath the lower ones it cast violet shadows on the snow. "What next?" I was thinking, and might have spared myself the trouble of that thought, for just then Mrs. Macleod knocked at the door and came in. "In the dark? Marcia, my dear, we need you down stairs." "Of course I 'll come, Mrs. Macleod, if you wish me to, but I don't quite see how, as your companion and assistant, I am needed now down stairs. I shall feel as if I were not earning my salt, just playing lady." Now, can any one tell me why the spirit of revolt at the change in my position in this house, through the coming of the owner and his friend, should have materialized in just this ungracious speech? I was ashamed of myself the moment I had given it utterance. Such a mean sentiment! Not worthy of a woman of twenty-six. I was thankful she could not see my face. She hesitated before replying. When she spoke I heard a note of displeasure in her voice. "I need you now, perhaps, more than before. With these guests in the house, there is more responsibility than during the last three weeks." "If only they _were_ guests!" The perverse spirit was still at work within me. "But we are the guests now, and I don't quite see what my work is to be; my position seems to be an anomalous one."