When her inspection of the house came her feelings were further stirred; there was a great bump of veneration in her for ancient things. Her artistic sensibilities which had not yet been as awakened as her practical ones now began to assert themselves. She felt she must read books upon architecture, and learn the dates and styles of furniture. She admired, but she was conscious that she had not yet sufficiently cultivated critical faculties to appreciate fully. Her tour opened a new field of study for her--a new consciousness of her own ignorance, and a new determination to acquire the necessary knowledge on these points. Ever since her outing with Lord Algy, she had been aware that mere book-learning is not enough. There were many things of interest in life that she would never have heard of or realised the existence of but for that first opening to her imagination. Mr. Strobridge would be an invaluable teacher, but she must get up a few technical points first. She would at once ask her mistress if she might take some books from the library, up to her sitting-room for the evening. She would immediately look up the bald facts in the Encyclopedia to begin with, and then study individual volumes. Then there were the painters and the sculptors to learn about more fully, although she had often gone to the galleries and museums in London, but not with what--she now knew, after her inspection of this home where for hundreds of years the owners had been cultivated collectors--was a critical eye. She felt as if the key to understanding had only just been given to her. Even the housekeeper (not Mrs. Pepperdon of Berkeley Square, but this elderly, portly Mrs. Illingworth) knew more about the beauties that she was showing off than she did. This state of ignorance must not continue for even a week! Permission was accorded about the books when Lady Garribardine looked into the secretary's room before her tea--and until three o'clock in the morning this indefatigable young woman kept her lights on, cramming facts into her head--and then when her work was over before lunch next day she walked again through the picture gallery and the big drawing-rooms to see if she had mastered anything. The picture gallery was filled with early and late Italian works, and some fine specimens of Spanish Renaissance as well as English portraits. She found that with even this much knowledge gained she had already grown more appreciative, but she realised that it was a question of training her eye as well as her brain. The guests were all to arrive on Christmas Eve and a message came for Katherine that she was to come down and pour out the tea for them, because "Her Ladyship's hand was very rheumatic."