Isola read her sister’s glowing descriptions of dinners and routs, gowns by Worth or Cresser, suppers for two hundred people at a guinea a head, from Gunter, waggon-loads of cut roses from Cheshunt or Cheam, and felt no thrill of longing, no pang of envy. Life in the Angler’s Nest might be dull; but it was only dull because Martin was away. She would have felt more solitary in Hans Place, had she accepted Gwendolen’s invitation to spend her Christmas there, than she would feel in the cottage by the river, even with no better company than Tabitha, Shah, and Tim. She was essentially shy and retiring. Her girlhood had been spent in a very narrow world, among people whom she seemed to have known all her life; for while Gwendolen, who was six years older, and had been “out” for four years before she married, joined in all the little gaieties of the place, and was always making new acquaintance, Isola, who was not “out,” spent her days for the most part in a half-neglected garden on the slope of the hill that looks across the Rance towards the unseen sea. The view from that garden was one of the finest in Western France; and it was Isola’s delight to sit in a little berceau at the end of a terrace walk, with her books and work-basket and drawing-board, all through the long tranquil summer day, in a silence broken by the sound of wheels and horses’ feet on the viaduct and bridge two or three hundred feet below, or by the muffled music of the organ in the convent chapel. * * * * * Tim, the fox-terrier, and Shah, the Persian cat, were both on the lawn with their mistress this morning. They were not friendly towards each other, but preserved an armed neutrality. Tim chased every stray strange cat with a fury that threatened annihilation; and he always looked as if he would like to give chase to Shah, when that dignified piece of fluff moved slowly across the lawn before him with uplifted tail that seemed to wave defiance; but he knew that any attack upon that valued personage would entail punishment and disgrace. Isola loved both these animals--the cat a wedding-present from an old Breton lady in Dinan, the terrier her husband’s parting legacy. “Take care of Tim,” he had said, the day they parted on board the steamer at Venice. The dog loved his mistress vehemently and obtrusively, leaping into her lap at the slightest sign of indulgence in her eye. The cat suffered himself to be adored, receiving all attentions with a sleepy complacency.