So, as he packed his portmanteau, he whistled lightheartedly. Aura, meanwhile having finished her burial, went off to the book-room where she found her grandfather, as usual, busy with pen and paper, the writing-table drawn up to the fire, the solitary extra chair in which Ted had been sitting looking lone and outcast, camped away in the open beyond the leather screen which in winter always surrounded Mr. Smith's socialism and the fire. He was looking a little flushed, and she paused, ere sitting down on the floor by the hearth to say anxiously, "You haven't been vexing yourself, I hope, grandfather, while I was away--I--I had rather a headache--so I went up the hills. Martha----" "Martha has been excellent, as usual," he replied, "on the whole she does Parkinson's work fairly well; though I could wish----" here he sighed--"the absence of a suitable cap and apron is certainly to be deplored, but she makes an excellent omelette." He turned again to his work of writing a pamphlet on the Simple Life. Aura sat watching him, as she had watched him as long as she could remember. She was very fond, very proud of him. Extremely well read, curiously quick in mind, he had taught her everything she knew, and she was but just beginning to find out that this everything was more than most women are supposed to know. She had found no difficulty in holding her own with Ned and Ted, and Dr. Ramsay and Mr. Hirsch, except so far as mere knowledge of the world went, and that was not worth counting. To her mind grandfather had had the best of any argument she had ever heard; but then Ned would never argue with him. Still he had not taught her all things. He had never mentioned love or marriage, or birth or death, though these surely were the chief factors in life--in a woman's life anyhow. Suddenly, out of the almost bewildering ramifications of her thought, she put, almost thoughtlessly, a question. "Grandfather, was my father fond of me?" Mr. Sylvanus Smith looked up startled, and distinctly pale. "I had not the honour of your father's acquaintance," he said icily, "therefore I cannot say." Then he, as it were, pulled himself together. "And you will oblige me," he continued, "by not asking any more questions of the sort. I cannot answer them." He went on writing, but his hand trembled a little. She had heard this formula more than once, but after a time, moved thereto by the new stress in her thoughts, the girl rose, and going up behind him stood looking over his shoulder. "Grandfather," she said, "I am not going to ask any more questions about the past. I don't see that it matters at all. I should like to have known that my father was--was glad of me; my mother must have been, I think, though she died so soon. But I should like to know what is in the future. What--what do you expect me to do? Do you wish me to marry?" He turned round in his chair, and looked at her helplessly.