“It seems a shame so beautiful a place should ‘waste its sweetness on the desert air,’” she said, half-laughingly, half-earnestly. “But we know you will not leave it as it is,” she went on, in a low voice, to Hugh, as they followed the inwardly-elated housekeeper out of the room. “You see, Ralph is getting to be a young man, and should meet people. We have thought you would come to see this in its right light before very long.” As Mrs. Mervyn was saying these words, they were passing through the hall, and Mrs. Gray, in her exuberance of spirits at the prospect of liveliness to come, went up to the gong and sounded the summons to luncheon in quite a joyous fashion. Hugh, following Mrs. Mervyn into the dining-room, was struck by the bare and empty appearance of the room, but he was still more impressed by something else. This was Lilia’s portrait in pastel, which he had had painted by a celebrated French artist after her death, to be hung over the mantelshelf where Roderick Pym’s portrait in oils used to hang. This portrait, which had been somewhat of an abstraction, a study in grey and lilac, had lost whatever life the artist had put into it. “It might be a portrait of her ghost,” he thought, with an eerie feeling. In truth, as he sat at luncheon, and afterwards, when he and Ralph laid the wreaths on the grave, there was no longer that old sensation of her presence lingering about the place. It was all empty as a husk. “The old life has gone for ever,” he thought. To make the Pinewood bearable, he felt he must live a new life. They took tea at the Rectory with the Mervyns. As he was strolling in the garden with his hostess afterwards, he said to her, suddenly: “If I should invite people here later on, would you consent to be hostess for a time?” Mrs. Mervyn was slightly startled, but acquiesced. After the father and son had left, she broached the matter to her husband. “Do you think he means to marry again?” suggested Mr. Mervyn, who had noticed some change in Hugh. “Marry again!” Mrs. Mervyn’s indignation made her husband smile. “Well, we shall see,” he said. “My belief is, he will.” Arrived home, by far more cheerful than when he started, Hugh went at once to his library for letters. There were a few, manifestly business communications. He looked at these somewhat blankly, then rang the bell. “Are these all the letters?” he asked. “Yes, sir.” “Who called?” “No one, sir.” “You are _sure_?” He looked somewhat sternly at old Jones (the prattler). “I am positive certain, sir,” said the old domestic, aggrieved, casting a reproachful look at his master as he retired. Dr. Paull had never spoken so sharply to him before. “What a curious thing,” Hugh was telling himself. “Lady Forwood made all that fuss about my seeing the girl—and I am not sent for!”