I think my sister Lucy was more shocked than any one else by the death of our father. I say shocked, because I am not certain whether or not the word grieved would apply accurately. For one thing, Lucy had never before seen any dead person. Neither had I, for that matter; but Lucy was more affected by the actual presence in the house of Death, than I was. Twice a day for years she had kissed our father's forehead. Now and again she had sat upon the arm of his chair and stroked his thin hair. These demonstrations were connected, I believe, with the quest of favours--permission, money, and so forth; but doubtless affection played a part in them. As for Lucy's home life, a little conversation I recall on the occasion of her driving me to the station when I was leaving for what proved my last term at Cambridge, seems to me to throw some light. I had but recently learned of Lucy's engagement to marry Doctor Woodthrop, of Davenham Minster, our nearest market-town. I had found Woodthrop a decent fellow enough, but thirty-four as against Lucy's twenty-one, inclining ominously to corpulence, and as flatly prosaic and unadventurous a spirit as a small country town could produce. Now, as Lucy seemed to me to have hankerings in the direction of social pleasures and the like, with a penchant for brilliancy and daring, I was a little puzzled about her engagement, for Woodthrop was one who kept a few conversational pleasantries on hand, as a man keeps old pipes on a rack, for periodical use at suitable times. "So you are actually going to be married, Loo?" I said. "Oh, well, engaged, Dick," she replied, with a little blush. "With a view, I presume. Then I suppose it follows that you are in love--h'm?" "Why, Dick, what a cross-examiner you are!" The blush increased. "Well, my dear girl, surely it's a natural assumption, is it not?" "Oh, I suppose so. But----" "Yes?" "Well, I don't think in real life it's the same thing that you read about in novels, do you, Dick?" "What? Being in love?" "Yes." "Well, perhaps not; but I imagine it ought to be something pretty pronounced, you know, even in such a pale reflection of the novels as real life. I gather that it ought to be; seriously, Loo, I think it ought to be. I suppose you do love Woodthrop, don't you?" My sister looked a little distressed, and I half-regretted having put so direct a question. I was sufficiently the product of my day to be terribly afraid of any kind of interference with my fellow creatures. Our apotheosis of individual liberty had made any such action anathema, "bad form," a sin more resented in the sinner than cowardice or dishonesty, or than any kind of wickedness which was strictly personal and, as you might say, self-contained. Our one object of universal reverence and respect was the personal equation.