collar of his coat. Oliver was exceedingly fond of the old parlour, and he was decidedly not fond of Fan’s drawing-room; at the same time he was cast in a different mould from the Squire of Copley Grange. Oliver had his own views on æsthetics as on everything else, but the pattern of a wall-paper or the tone of a carpet did not cost him agonies. He was not always calling out for calm and repose and key notes. His residence in Oxford had no doubt cultivated his taste without his knowing it, but the training had failed to beget in him a special mania—apart from intrinsic beauty or pleasant associations—for old oak and blue china, Venetian glass, or Queen Anne needlework, unless the last were the homely old garden-flower which bears that name. Now, as it had more than once occurred to him, if Fan had been in some of the men’s rooms, and had possessed rooms of her own, she would by this time have been engulfed beyond the redemption of her natural taste in a charmed region of dim and soft hues, faded colours and faint tracery varied by bold interjections; she would have sat surrounded by mystic dados, quaint Indian and Japanese matting, stately Jacobian chairs, gorgeous peacock’s plumes and sunflowers. Yet it was Oliver and not Fan—as both were aware—who was imaginative and susceptible. Except where her prominent bump of order was concerned, it was he and not she, who was sensitively affected by the surroundings; above all it was he who was tenderly faithful to his first love in household gods, as in inanimate nature. Oliver and Fan Constable talked at dinner of the hundred-and-one nothings which the members of one family, meeting after some months’ separation which has not divided the speakers in more than space, find to interest them. Oliver took occasion to remark, _à propos_ of the dinner itself, that Sally Pope had not lost her skill, and that he was quite able to do justice to her fried soles and lamb cutlets though he had dined at Paddington. He had not meant either to try Sally’s patience, or to keep Fan’s dinner waiting. He had intended to come in for her tea. ‘I don’t mind dining late, indeed, I greatly prefer it,’ said Fan with decision; ‘and since—since poor father is gone,’ it was an effort for her still to get out the words, though she showed no inclination to cry,—she was not the ordinary sort of woman, who is given to express her deepest feelings in tears,—‘we have not his tastes and habits to think of first. There is no need for you to dine early after you have been so long accustomed to dine late in hall.’