“It doesn't matter,” said the other carelessly. “I have my own fortune. And it is not my face,” she added with her quick smile. “Now let us look farther. I must see all of these wonderful things. We will not be missed, and it is still half an hour till tea-time. My husband is now telling his son all there is to be told about me--who and what I am, and how he came to marry me. Not, mind you, how I came to marry him, but--the other way round. It's the way with men past middle age.” Lydia hesitated before speaking. “Mr Brood does not confide in Frederic. I am afraid they have but little in common. Oh, I shouldn't have said that!” Mrs Brood regarded her with narrowing eyes. “He doesn't confide in Frederic?” she repeated in the form of a question. Her voice seemed lower than before. “I'm sorry I spoke as I did, Mrs Brood,” said the girl, annoyed with herself. “Is there a reason why he should dislike his son?” asked the other, regarding her fixedly. “Of course not,” cried poor Lydia. There was a moment of silence. “Some day, Lydia, you will tell me about Mr Brood's other wife.” “She died many years ago,” said the girl evasively. “I know,” said Mrs Brood. “Still, I should like to hear more of the woman he could not forget in all those years--until he met me.” She grew silent and preoccupied, a slight frown marking her forehead as she resumed her examination of the room and its contents. It is quite impossible adequately to describe the place in which the two women met for the first time. Suffice to say, it was long, narrow, and, being next below the roof, low-ceilinged. The walls were hung with rich, unusual tapestries whose subdued tones seemed to lure one back to the undimmed glory of Solomon's days, to the even more remote realms of those gods and goddesses on whom our fancy thrives despite the myths they were. Silks of a weight and lustre that taxed credulity; golden threads interweaving gems of the purest ray; fringe and galloons with the solemn waste of ages in their thin, lovely sheen; over all the soft radiance of an _Arabian Night_ and the gentle touch of a _Scheherazade._ Here hung transported the fabulous splendours of Ind, the shimmering treasures of Ming, and the loot of the _Forty Thieves_. The ceiling, for want of a better name, was no less than a canopy constructed out of a single rug of enormous dimensions and incalculable value, gleaming with the soft colours of the rainbow, shedding a serene iridescence over the entire room to shame the light of day.