His anxiety upon his father's account was speedily set at rest, for Mr. Carew--after exploring his son's small and strictly popular library, where among rows of handsomely bound standard works, there were practically no books which appealed to the scholar's taste--soon wearied of unstudious ease, and announced a stern necessity for going to London, where a certain defunct Hebrew scholar's library, lay and ecclesiastical, was to be sold at Hodgson's. He would put up for a few days at the old-fashioned hotel which he had used since he was an undergraduate, potter about among the book-shops, look up some references he wanted in the Museum Reading-room, and meet his wife at Liverpool Street on her way home. Lady Emily, absorbed in her son and her son's love affair, agreed most amiably to this arrangement. "Telegraph your day and hour for returning, when you have bought all the books you want," she said. "I'm afraid you spend more money on those dreadful old books, which nobody in Suffolk cares a straw about, than I do on my farm, which people come to see from far and wide." "And a great nuisance your admirers are, Emily. I am very glad the Suffolk people are no book-lovers; and I hope you will never hint to anybody that my books are worth seeing." "I could not say anything so untrue. Your shelves are full of horrors. Now Allan's library here is really delightful--_Blackwood's Magazine_, from the beginning, _Macaulay_, _Scott_, _Dickens_, _Thackeray_, _Bulwer_, _Lever_, _Marryat_--and all of them so handsomely bound! I think my brother showed excellent taste in literature, though I doubt if he ever read much. But as you seem happier in your library than anywhere else, I suppose one must forgive you for spending a fortune on books that don't interest anybody else. And one can't help being a little bit proud of your scholarship." And so they kissed and parted, with the unimpassioned kiss of marriage which has never meant more than affectionate friendship. Lady Emily stood at the hall door while her husband drove off to the station, and then turned gaily to her son, and said-- "Now, Allan, I am yours to command. Let me see as much as possible of that sweet young thing you are in love with. Shall we go and call on her this afternoon? She has a white cat which may some day provide her with kittens to distribute among her friends, and, if so, I am to have one to bring up by hand as I did Snowdrop. You remember Snowdrop?" Allan kissed his mother before he answered, but not for Snowdrop's sake. "I have a vague recollection of something white and fluffy hanging to the skirt of your gown, that I used to tread upon." "Yes, you were horrid. You very nearly killed him. Shall we go?" "Please, please, please, mother dearest. I am ready this instant. Three o'clock. We shall get there at half-past, and if we loiter looking at white kittens, or the mother of potential kittens, till half-past four, she will give us tea, and we can make an afternoon of it."