For Graham, also, to be home here once more was very pleasant. They dined in the great oak dining-room――the light of sunset streaming in across the table, catching the whiteness of damask, the deep crimson of roses half buried in their dark green leaves, the gleam of glass and old silver, and making the shaded candles to be but ornamental. On the dark panelled walls hung a few choice Dutch ‘genre’ paintings:――an ‘Interior,’ by Pieter de Hooch; a ‘Music Lesson,’ by Gerard Terburg; a ‘Frost Scene,’ by Adriaen van de Velde; a ‘Portrait,’ by Gerard Dou; but no picture, Graham thought, could ever be half so charming as the young boy sitting opposite him, the softly blended light playing upon his beautiful face, his delicate hands. Graham watched him with a curious feeling of pride. He noticed his delightful courteousness, his perfect breeding, his wonderful distinction. Yes, there was a great deal in birth, in blood! For even in his short experience of school life he had learned something of the hopelessness and vulgarity of a spreading democracy. And he saw with pleasure that his father had taken to the boy, that he was not insensible to the deference of Harold’s manner, his efforts to please, his easy grace. * * * * * After dinner the two boys wandered out of doors again, but went no further than the porch. Both were a little tired. Brocklehurst sat on one of the steps, and Graham half sat, half lay, a little below him, tracing with the point of a stick fantastic lines and figures in the gravel of the carriage sweep. The quiet of evening, of the perfect ending of a day, was all about them; and they sat in silence, that strange silence which seems to listen for the faint footfall of the hour that is approaching, the hour that is to be, the hour as yet so full of mystery, of hope, of the unknown. The lawn stretched below them, smooth, greyish in the waning light. Upon its shaven surface clumps of laurel, barbary, and rhododendron stood out as darker, bordering patches――stood out a little stiffly in the nearly windless air; and against the clear pale sky the trees of the avenue were still. ‘How close that cloud is!’ Graham murmured. ‘Isn’t it almost as if we ourselves were floating up to it?’