Lucilla meantime was very much occupied upstairs. She had the new housemaid up nominally to give her instructions about Mr Tom's room, but really to take the covers off the chairs, and see how they looked when the room was lighted up; but the progress of decay had gone too far to stand that trial. After all, the chintz, though none of the freshest, was the best. When the gentlemen came upstairs, which Tom, to the Doctor's disgust, insisted on doing, Lucilla was found in the act of pacing the room--pacing, not in the sentimental sense of making a little promenade up and down, but in the homely practical signification, with a view of measuring, that she might form an idea how much carpet was required. Lucilla was tall enough to go through this process without any great drawback in point of grace--the long step giving rather a tragedy-queen effect to her handsome but substantial person and long, sweeping dress. She stopped short, however, when she saw them, and withdrew to the sofa, on which she had established her throne; and there was a little air of conscious pathos on her face as she sat down, which impressed her companions. As for Tom, he instinctively felt that it must have something to do with that mystery under which Lucilla was supported by her duty; and the irrelevant young man conceived immediately a violent desire to knock the fellow down; whereas there was no fellow at all in the case, unless it might be Mr Holden, the upholsterer, whose visits Miss Marjoribanks would have received with greater enthusiasm at this moment than those of the most eligible eldest son in England. And then she gave a little pathetic sigh. "What were you doing, Lucilla?" said her father,--"rehearsing Lady Macbeth, I suppose. At least you looked exactly like it when we came into the room." "No, papa," said Lucilla sweetly; "I was only measuring to see how much carpet we should want; and that, you know, and Tom's coming, made me think of old times. You are so much downstairs in the library that you don't feel it; but a lady has to spend her life in the drawing-room--and then I always was so domestic. It does not matter what is outside, I always find my pleasure at home. I cannot help if it has a little effect on my spirits now and then," said Miss Marjoribanks, looking down upon her handkerchief, "to be always surrounded with things that have such associations----" "What associations?" said the amazed Doctor. To be sure, he had forgotten his wife; but it was four years ago, and he had got used to her absence from her favourite sofa; and, on the whole, in that particular, had acquiesced in the arrangements of Providence. "Really, Lucilla, I don't know what you mean."