While he read, he held "Willard's Magazine" on his knee. It was overwhelming, ennobling, to be connected with so great a man. He longed to read the story to his mother, to make her see in it what he saw, to ask a hundred questions about Basil. He reviewed all the facts that he knew; the locked room which had been Basil's; the conviction, early impressed upon him, that it was not to be entered, was not, indeed, a place where one would wish to be. "I hope, when I am dead, no one will treat my room that way," said Richard. To die with work undone, with life waiting! How cruel! He wondered whether Basil had known that he must die. Shivering, he went out of the cool study into the sunshine. Dr. Lister returned, as was expected, at four o'clock. He looked white and tired. When Richard met him with the word that Mrs. Lister was not well, he went at once to her room. There, weeping, she told him about "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class." What he had to tell made her feel no better. She said that she did not wish any supper; she would stay where she was, and when he had told Richard he should come back. "Tell him at once," said Mary Alcestis as she hid her face in the pillow. Together Richard and his father had a quiet supper. The table shone with its array of old silver, and upon the meal 'Manda had done her best. Both men ate heartily. Richard gave his father an account of the few unimportant incidents of his absence, but Dr. Lister gave in return no account of his journey. "Mother was sitting on the porch when suddenly she said she didn't feel well and went upstairs. She wouldn't let me do anything for her. I think it was Uncle Basil's story which made her feel badly. I hope nobody will ever bury me like that! I don't even know what he looked like!" When supper was over the two went into the study and there Dr. Lister closed the door. He took the chair behind his desk, and then, as though dissatisfied with that magisterial position, crossed the room and sat down by one of the low windows. Richard waited, standing by the desk, impatient to be gone, and prepared for some unwelcome command. Had his father visited his acquaintances in Baltimore and was he to be ordered to Johns Hopkins? He rejected this as untenable. His father would not treat him like a baby. Was it an ultimatum, favorable or unfavorable, about music? He trembled. Several seconds passed before Dr. Lister began to speak, and he had in that time exchanged twice the position of his knees. So long was the silence that Richard gave expression to his impatience. "Father, the queerest air of mystery pervades this house. Mother is not ill; she is offended with me. She will scarcely speak to me. I made an entirely innocent remark, and off she went. If I have done anything to bring this about, I am sorry and I'll try to correct it. If my speaking about Uncle Basil hurt her feelings, I'll never do that again. But I can't be treated like a baby." Dr. Lister blinked.