“Ah, that was something like belonging! it warmed us, my dear, it warmed us; that’s what made us alive. Do you think if your Grandpapa had never loved us in the way he did that we should be here walking and breathing--we, but semblances of human form dwelling in pigment and paste? It’s only love that can make alive, and he did it. Sometimes, after all the lights were out and the folks in bed, the door would open and he’d enter. I can see him in his dressing-gown and slippers, the light shining on the mahogany door; his clean white hair, and shrewd face. His hands so swift in movement, so beautifully kept, his beard trimmed so neatly. Did you ever see him untidy, I wonder, or harassed, or wasting time? Never--it all went so easily, he had the long-houred day of a busy man. Time to read aloud to others, time to look over his old French books, time to saunter out and play golf earnestly, and time, above all, to spend, upon us. How he loved us. We shall never have _that_ again.” “O yes you shall,” said Clare, for she was warm-hearted really, for all the Scotch pebble in her eyes on occasion--“O yes, you shall. Why--we all, all like you we are all going to learn about you, Mother says so; it is only Lady Crosbie who sometimes ... bores her, you know.” This came out rushingly, and Clare would have withdrawn it, but the spoken word is like a sped arrow, there is no calling either back. Mrs. Inchbald changed completely. Her brown eyes twinkled comfortably, and she leaned in her eagerness, right out of her chair. “You don’t say so? Well, I agree with her. I believe I shall get on with your Mother, after all, though she does let you all victimise her, and reads such dull books. But I shouldn’t have chosen the word _bore_ exactly. I shouldn’t say Lady Crosbie ever _bored_ people ... dear me, O no, she’s vastly entertaining, my dear, to those she thinks worth it....” “Well, Mother says however charming she must have been in life, it is rather tiresome, in a picture, to be looking permanently mischievous. She says, although Lady Crosbie is flitting off into such a lovely landscape, she’s not really going to know how to enjoy the country at all.” “My dear, your Mother’s talking about something she doesn’t rightly know about, begging your pardon, if she calls that country. That’s studio, my dear, sheer studio, and a very good studio landscape it is. But all the same, your Mother’s opinion interests me; I notice she keeps the light on some, and not so often on others. I wonder what she thinks about it all.” [Illustration: _Reynolds._ ROBERT MAYNE, M.P. FOR UPPER GATTON.]