Yes, she remembered, she knew. This was Antonio. This was the Italian with the pathetic voice, who sat in the twilight, singing church music, that summer evening long ago. This was the man whose face memory associated with the face of her dead mother. She had seen them looking at her together in those days of early childhood, whose faint memories are like a reminiscence of some anterior state of being, a world known before earth. The butler came back. ‘My master will see you, sir.’ The stranger followed him out of the hall. Beatrix and Bella could hear the footsteps travelling slowly along the passage to the library. ‘Who can he be?’ exclaimed Miss Scratchell, full of curiosity. ‘Perhaps he is a relation of your papa’s,’ she added, speculatively, Beatrix having ignored her first remark. Beatrix remained silent. She was thinking of the miniature in her mother’s room, the youthful likeness of the face she had seen to-night. Who was this man? Her mother’s kinsman, perhaps? But why had his presence brought sorrow and severance between husband and wife? Little as she knew of the hard facts that made up the history of her mother’s life, there was that in Beatrix’s memory which told her this man had been the cause of evil. She roused herself with an effort, and went back to her room, followed by Bella, who had broken out into fresh yawns on finding that the advent of the stranger promised no relief to the dulness of the evening. ‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, as the old clock in the hall announced that fact, embellishing a plain truth with a little burst of old-fashioned melody. ‘They are coming out of church by this time. I wonder whether Mr. Culverhouse has preached one of his awakening sermons? I am sure we should be the better for a little awakening, shouldn’t we, Beatrix? I really wish you would talk a little, dear. You look as if you were walking in your sleep.’ ‘Do I?’ said Beatrix. ‘Here comes the tea-tray. Perhaps a cup of tea may enliven us.’ ‘Well, the urn is company at any rate,’ assented Bella, as the servant set down the oblong silver tray, with its buff and gold Bristol cups and saucers, and the massive old urn, dimly suggestive of sisterly affection in the person of Electra, or needing only a napkin neatly draped across it to recall the sculptured monuments of a modern cemetery. ‘Now, really,’ pursued Bella, while Beatrix was making tea, ‘have you no idea who that foreign-looking gentleman is?’ ‘Why should I trouble myself about him? He comes to see papa, not me.’ ‘Yes, but one can’t help being curious so long as one is human. By the time my inquisitiveness is worn out I shall be an angel. Your papa has so few visitors; and this one has such a distinguished appearance. I feel sure he is some one of importance.’ ‘Very likely.’ ‘My dear Beatrix, this lonely life of yours is making you dreadfully stoical,’ remonstrated Bella.