"Only once," said Atherley, calmly. "Do you ever see her now, Lindy? She has grown enormously fat. Certainly I have had my illusions, and I don't object to them when they are pleasant and harmless--on the contrary. Now, falling in love, if you don't fall too deep, is pleasant, and it never lasts long enough to do much mischief. Marriage, of course, you will say, may be mischievous--only for the individual, it is useful for the race. What I object to is the deliberate culture of illusions which are not pleasant but distinctly depressing, like half your religious beliefs." "George," said Lady Atherley, coming into the room at this instant; "have you--oh, dear! what a state this room is in!" "It is the housemaids. They never will leave things as I put them." "And it was only dusted and tidied an hour ago. Mr. Lyndsay, did you ever see anything like it?" I said "Never." "If Lindy has a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as my old nurse used to say--as pernickety as an old maid. The stiff formality of his room would give me the creeps, if anything could. The first thing I always want to do when I see it is to make hay in it." "It is what you always do do, before you have been an hour there," I observed. "Jane, in Heaven's name leave those things alone! Is this sort of thing all you came in for?" "No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux's letter." "No, I have not; her writing is too bad for anything. Besides, I know exactly what she has got to say. She has at last found the religion which she has been looking for all her life, and she intends to be whatever it is for evermore." "That is not all. She wants to come and stay here for a few days." "What! Here? Now? Why, what--oh, I forgot the ghost! By Jove! You see, Jane, there are some advantages in having one on the premises when it procures you a visit from a social star like Mrs. Molyneux. But where are you going to put her? Not in the bachelor's room, where your poor uncle made such a night of it? It wouldn't hold her dressing bag, let alone herself." "Oh, but I hope the pink room will be ready. The plasterer from Whitford came out yesterday to apologise, and said he had been keeping his birthday." "Indeed! and how many times a year does he have a birthday?" "I don't know, but he was quite sober; and he did the most of it yesterday and will finish it to-day, so it will be all right." "When is she coming, then?" "To-morrow. You would have seen that if you had read the letter. And there is a message for you in it, too."