“Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?” she said. “If you say ‘no,’ I sha’n’t. But, please, Pepino----” Pepino, however, had been instructed to say “yes,” and accordingly did so. “You see, dear Miss Olga,” said Lucia, “that a little property has come to us through that grievous tragedy last week. A house has been left to Pepino in Brompton Square, all furnished, and with a beautiful music-room. So we’re thinking, as there is no immediate hurry about selling it, of spending a few weeks there this season, very quietly of course, but still perhaps entertaining a few friends. Then we shall have time to look about us, and as the house is there, why not use it in the interval? We shall go there at the end of the month.” This little speech had been carefully prepared, for Lucia felt that if she announced the full extent of their plan, Riseholme would suffer a terrible blow. It must be broken to Riseholme by degrees: Riseholme must first be told that they were to be up in town for a week or two, pending the sale of the house. Subsequently Riseholme would hear that they were not going to sell the house. She looked round to see how this section of Riseholme took it. A chorus of the emphatic “No” burst from Georgie, Mrs. Quantock, and Olga, who, of course, had fully discussed this disclosure already; even Robert, very busy with his dinner, said “No” and went on gobbling. “So sweet of you all to say ‘No,’” said Lucia, who knew perfectly well that the emphatic interjection meant only surprise, and the desire to hear more, not the denial that such a thing was possible, “but there it is. Pepino and I have talked it over--_non è vero, carissimo?_--and we feel that there is a sort of call to us to go to London. Dearest Aunt Amy, you know, and all her beautiful furniture! She never would have a stick of it sold, and that seems to point to the fact that she expected Pepino and me not to wholly desert the dear old family home. Aunt Amy was born there, eighty-three years ago.” “My dear! How it takes one back!” said Georgie. “Doesn’t it?” said Olga. Lucia had now, so to speak, developed her full horsepower. Pepino’s presence stoked her, Robert was stoking himself and might be disregarded, while Olga and Georgie were hanging on her words. “But it isn’t the past only that we are thinking of,” she said, “but the present and the future. Of course our spiritual home is here--like Lord Haldane and Germany--and oh, how much we have learned at Riseholme, its lovely seriousness and its gaiety, its culture, its absorption in all that is worthy in art and literature, its old customs, its simplicity.” “Yes,” said Olga. (She had meant long ago to tell Lucia that she had taken a house in Brompton Square exactly opposite Lucia’s, but who could interrupt the splendour that was pouring out on them?)