Making as it does for desultory conversation and tempered criticism of your neighbour’s failings, the half-hour after tea in a country house is one of the most pleasant of the day. Confidences spring from it, and intimacies ripen. Lovers drift happily away from their chaperones, knowing their absence will be unnoticed. The elder folk, who find interest and joy in each other’s company, move together with no conscious effort into friendly nooks and corners where they are unobserved. Silences fall quite naturally on such occasions. Nobody minds them. They are, indeed, keys of that deeper confidence which is one of life’s most beautiful gifts. The five or six members of Lord Creagh’s house-party who collected in his study day after day at the same hour, ostensibly to admire the tropical plants for whose cultivation he was famed, had come to look upon this reunion as the most vital of the day. "Wit and brilliance depend almost as much on the furniture of a room as on the furniture of a mind," thought Evelyn Brand, one of the two women in the group, giving herself up, as Celts do, to the characteristic atmosphere. "Even Lady Mary Wortley-Montague herself could never have made her brilliant epigrams on a black horse-hair sofa backed by magenta curtains and stuffed birds in glass cases. The Nonconformist conscience, if it did but know it, owes quite half of its solidity to the mahogany four-poster in which it came to life. ’Victorian suites’ make you formal and stilted, just as chintz and lavender and lattice windows compel discretion and a modest blush. How I love lavender! Why, age itself would fall quite tenderly upon the occupant of such a house as I would furnish if I could—a tender place of peace and perfume. Grey hair and gentle influences go together; old age should win one as a lover instead of capturing one as an enemy." Under the spell of her idea, Evelyn fell into one of those quiet abstractions which her husband had found so convenient before marriage and so melancholy after. And yet discriminating eyes looking at her for the first time would have seen mystery rather than melancholy in her gaze, thought the man who was sitting beside her watching the progress of her dream with a gentle smile. Creagh, many years before, had lost the woman whom he loved so well that for her sake all other women could count upon his friendship. But he had his favourites. He was, for instance, one of Evelyn’s staunchest admirers. Belonging to the type of man who achieves nothing very vital himself, he was always the cause of achievement in others. Many years ago Evelyn’s husband, who had a dangerous habit of epigram, nicknamed Lord Creagh "The Holy Freak," and the name stuck.