When the drawing-rooms had been transformed by a gayer style of decoration, more in harmony with Vera's frivolous entertainments, Claude had been urgent that these ground-floor rooms should be refurnished, and every trace of their severe, business-like aspect done away with and even certain priceless old masters that Provana had been proud of despatched with ruthless haste to Christie's sale room; but to his astonishment Vera had told him that nothing was to be changed in the rooms her husband had occupied--that all things touched or valued by him were to be sacred. For this reason, while approving Claude's plan of colour for the walls and draperies and carpets in the drawing-rooms, she had insisted upon retaining the Italian cabinets of ebony and ivory, and the Florentine mosaic tables, the things that had been collected all over Italy a century ago, in the beginning of the Provana riches. And now, solitary and dejected, she moved restlessly from room to room. Sometimes standing before one of the bookcases in the library, looking along the titles of books that she had learnt to love, in those far-off days before she had been launched by the Disbrowes--a frail cockle-shell, spinning round and round in the Society whirlpool--while she and her husband were still unfashionable enough to sit together in the autumn twilight, or to spend _tête-à-tête_ evenings in this solemn-looking room. His mind was with her there to-day, in the July sunshine, as it had been in those evenings of the past, while he was a living man. His remembered speech was in her ears to-day, grave and earnest, telling her the things she loved to hear, widening her view of life, opening the gate to new knowledge, the knowledge of authors she had never heard of, the story of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets, whose names had been only names till he made them living people, people to be admired and loved. He had taught her to comprehend and love Dante to appreciate the verse of Carducci, the prose of Manzoni. He had taught her to revere Cavour, to adore St. Francis of Assisi, to weep for Savonarola and Giordano Bruno. He had made Italy a land of genius and valour, a land alive from the Alps to the Adriatic with heroic memories. He had made her know and love the history of his country, almost as he himself loved it. And now his spirit filled the room in which the man had lived. His shadow had come into the house that had been his, and had taken possession of the place and of the atmosphere. Whatever might still remain of the undisciplined love, the passion of unreasoning youth, that she had given to her second husband, she could never again release herself from that first marriage tie. It was the bond of death.