"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He was very active and intelligent--hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible, matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing--what can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as those?--a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses? I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing to go. What can one do with such a woman?" "Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?" "Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth." "She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction. "She is interesting--only she won't let one be interested in her." "Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?" "Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the fields--Filbury parish church--nearly six miles from Discombe, or she drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe." "I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan. "Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint, remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra would have been interesting at forty-five." "I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am interested." "Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you." "Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"