Selina belonged to one of those small religious sects which have done so much to solve, to their own satisfaction at any rate, the obscure problems of eschatology. Ceaseless meditation upon the fact that ninety-nine per cent of the human race were damned made Selina gloomy, for she was not naturally a misanthropist and took no pleasure in the thought. Sometimes, moreover, she had doubts even about her own salvation, and on such days the household suffered. Jasmine's arrival at Rouncivell Lodge induced her to proclaim her conviction that with no exception at all the whole of the human race was to be damned eternally. Gradually, however, she realized that in any case she could not hope to inherit the whole of Uncle Matthew's fortune, and she decided that the few years between Uncle Matthew's death and her own projection into eternal torment would be more pleasantly and more profitably passed with Jasmine than alone on what might be an inadequate pension. No sooner had she reached this conclusion than she heard a voice in the night telling her that she was saved; the following morning she cooked some cakes and invited Jasmine to tea with her in the kitchen, the character of which accounted, Jasmine felt, for the housekeeper's yellow complexion; the room was as warm and nearly as dark as the inside of an oven. A large American clock, which only had to be wound up annually, was ticking over the high black mantelpiece; crickets were clicking somewhere behind the range; a green Norwich canary was pecking at his seeds; the hostess was rustling the tea in a canister. Selina came to the point at once, and postponing the discussion of Jasmine's chances in the eternal future asked her frankly how she proposed to provide for the temporal future.