I watched him for a while, fascinated. Then, as he took not the slightest notice of me, my eyes began to wander round the room. It was hexagonal and, on every side save one, lined from the floor to the high ceiling with books. The furniture was all of black oak, as also were the bookshelves, and the carpet and hangings were of a deep olive-green. The mantelpiece and inlaid grate were of black marble, faintly relieved with gold, and within the polished bars of the grate a small fire was burning. There was nothing cheerful about the apartment; on the contrary, it struck me as being, though magnificent, sombre and heavy, wrapped as it was in the gloom of a dismal twilight, which the flickering fire and the shaded lamp failed to pierce. From the high French windows, I could catch a glimpse of a long stretch of soddened lawn, beyond which everything was shrouded in the semi-obscurity of the fast-falling dusk, deepened by the grey, cloudy sky. But I chose, after my first glance around the room, to keep my eyes fixed upon the man who sat writing before me, the man in whom already I felt an interest so strong as to deaden all the curiosity which I might otherwise have felt as to my surroundings. At last he seemed conscious of my presence. Lifting his eyes, to give them a momentary rest, he encountered my fixed gaze. For a moment he looked at me in a puzzled manner, as though wondering how I came there. Then his expression changed and, putting down his pen, he pushed his papers away from him. "So you have come, Philip Morton," he said. To so self-evident a statement I could return no answer, save a brief affirmative. He seemed to expect nothing more, however. "How old did you say you were?" he asked abruptly. "Seventeen, sir." It was quite five minutes before he spoke again, during which time he sat with knitted brows and eyes fixed intently but absently upon me, deep in thought, and thought of which it seemed to me somehow that I must be the subject. "Where were you born?" "At the farm, sir--at least, I suppose so." It flashed into my mind at that moment that I had never heard the period of my earliest childhood spoken of either by my father or mother. But it was only a passing thought, dismissed almost as soon as conceived. Had we not always lived at the farm? Where else could I have been born? "Do you know any of your mother's relations?" Mr. Ravenor asked, taking no notice of the qualifying addition to my previous answer. I shook my head. I had never seen or heard of any of them, and it was a circumstance upon which I had more than once pondered. But my mother's reserved demeanour towards me of late years had checked many questions which I might otherwise have felt inclined to ask her. There was a brief silence, during which Mr. Ravenor sat with his face half turned away from me, resting it lightly upon the long, delicate fingers of his left hand.