My Christmas holidays were quietly passed with the Oriental Professor in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and his dear old sister, a quaint little vignette of a woman, forgot the world among her pansy beds. She was not visible at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza which kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a quiet, capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes, already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing that his pronouncements in that field were practically final, a man called before kings to determine the worth of their national treasures and curiosities--and his greatest pride was that he had beaten the hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public contest and had been invited to settle absolutely the nicest problems in a chess magazine! I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval in my life. I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old, grateful for the rest and oblivion my father's old university gave me so generously. When I thought of the feverish, break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot and doubtful reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day when the lawyers' letter had dropped half read on my knees and I had sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is all written, and the hour had not yet struck, that was all! CHAPTER XVI MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN [FROM SUE PAYNTER] WASHINGTON SQUARE, Oct. 16, 188-- JERRY DEAR: First about the will--how splendid it was! Nothing could have pleased Roger more, I am sure--he told me with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you _something_! What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming way, he impresses it on us!