There are few places in this world that cast a more profound gloom upon the human spirit than a sunny English drawing-room at 9.45 a.m. Its welcome is as frigid as a woman who fends off a kiss because she has just made up her lips. "If I feel like this now," said Jasmine to herself, "_Dio mio_, what shall I feel like in a month's time?" She put away the handkerchief almost at once, for even grief was frozen in this house, and memories that yesterday would have brought tears to her eyes were to-day so hardly imaginable that they had no power to affect her. "I'm really just as much dead as father," she sighed to the Japanese blinds that rustled faintly in a faint breeze from the sea. On an impulse she rushed upstairs to her bedroom, took off her black clothes, and came down again to the dining-room in a yellow silk jersey and a white skirt. "My dear Jasmine!... Already?..." ejaculated her aunt, when the household accounts were finished and she found her niece waiting for her in the drawing-room. "I don't know that your uncle will quite approve, so very soon after his brother's death." "I don't believe in mourning." "My dear child, are you quite old enough to give such a decided opinion on a custom which is universally followed--even by savages?" "Father would perfectly understand my feelings." "I daresay your father would understand, but I don't think your uncle will understand." And one felt that Sholto's comprehension in Paradise was a poor thing compared with his brother's lack of it on earth. "Anyway, I'm not going to wear black any longer," said Jasmine curtly. "As you will," her aunt replied with grave resignation. "Oh, and before I forget, I have told Hopkins to show you exactly how the blind is pulled up in your room. I'm afraid you didn't keep hold of the lower tassel this morning. They're still trying to get it down, and I am very much afraid we shall have to send for a carpenter to mend it. If you pull the string on the right without holding the lower tassel----" "I know," Jasmine interrupted. "I'm rather like that blind myself."