She gave Lucy’s hand a little pressure with her arm, and led her out of one softly lighted room into another, from the drawing-room, to the dining-room, where they sat down, in the midst of the surrounding dimness, at a shining table, all white and bright, with flowers upon it, unknown at this season in the Terrace. Lucy felt a thrill of awe when the family butler, most respectable of functionaries, put her chair close to the table as she sat down. Once more she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror which reflected her from head to foot, and wondered who it could be sitting there gazing at her with that little pale familiar face. After the meal was over they went back to a little inner drawing-room, to reach which they had to go through a whole suite of half-lighted, luxurious rooms, all softly warm with firelight. “This used to be my favorite room,” Lady Randolph said, sighing as she looked round. It was called the little drawing-room, and Lady Randolph spoke of it as a little nook; but it was bigger than the drawing-room at the Terrace. Here the girl was set down in a comfortable chair by the fire, and listened while Lady Randolph told of her former life here, and all she had done. “Tom is very kind,” she said; “but how can I come here without meeting ghosts, the ghosts of all my happy days?” Lucy listened with that devout attention which only youth so innocent and natural as hers can give to the recollections of one who has “gone through” these scenes of actual life which are all mystery and wonder to itself. Lucy had no ghosts in her memory; her father was not far enough off from her, nor was her sense of loss so strong as to make her feel that the world was henceforward peopled with sad recollection; but there was enough enlightenment in the touch of natural grief to make her understand. She was glad to be allowed to listen quietly--to feel the ache in her heart softened and subdued, and the lull of great exhaustion falling over her. That ache of natural, not excessive sorrow, is almost an additional luxury in such a case. It justifies the languor, and gives an ennobling reason for it. And in a mind so young the very existence of sorrow, the first touches of experience, the sense of really experiencing in its own person those emotions which it has heard of all its life, which are the inspiration of all tragedies, and the theme of all stories, carry with them an exquisite consciousness, which is near enjoyment, though it is pain. Lucy was perhaps in her own constitution too simply matter-of-fact to feel all this, yet she did feel it vaguely. She was no longer a school-girl, insignificant and happy, but a pale young woman in deep mourning who had taken a first step into the experiences of life. She leaned back in her chair with that ache in her heart which she was almost proud of, yet with a sense of luxurious well-being round her, warmth, softness, kindness, and her hand in Lady Randolph’s hand.