Wilbraham dismissed the unpleasant question of intemperance, in relief at the signs of comfort and refinement that he saw about him. The table in the middle of the room was laid for tea, as if that was the chief evening meal here. Wilbraham hoped that Bastian would not come in for it until he had talked to Viola. He made his way to the mantelpiece, upon which were a good many photographs. The photographs in a room tell you more than anything about its occupants. Something was told in this instance by the fact that they were all a good many years old. It meant, for one thing, that Viola and her father must have lived here for some time, and for another that they could have made few friends of late years. Wilbraham’s eye was caught by one of Bastian as a very young man in a group with three others, taken by a Cambridge photographer. His first thought as he looked at it, was to wonder whether he himself had changed so much in twenty years. Bastian appeared as a young man fashionably dressed and judging by his smile pleased with the world in general and with his own lot in it in particular. He had been more than usually good-looking in those days. There was another one of him on a horse, taken at about the same time, but not at Cambridge. Wilbraham wished afterwards that he had noticed the name and habitation of the photographer. Bastian had never told him from what part of the country he came, or anything about his early home and upbringing. But it was evident that he came from what it is customary to call "good people." It was hardly fair to keep Viola in ignorance of her parentage, which might possibly prove to be of some importance to her. There was a photograph of Viola herself at the age of about ten—a pretty child, but without the exceptional beauty into which she had grown. In a large frame was one of her mother, and there were others of her at different stages. Wilbraham examined them with some attention. She was certainly beautiful, with the same sort of beauty as Viola’s, though Wilbraham thought that if he had not known the facts about her he would yet have detected an absence of race, which seemed to him to be apparent in Viola, and perhaps also in her father. He tried to find in her support for Bastian’s praise of her character and temperament, but all he could have said was that there was nothing to show that she had not deserved it. She smiled sweetly in these photographs, some of which were in theatrical costume; she was young and beautiful and happy, and her early death added pathos to these presentments of her.