Her house, since she had been its mistress; but never hers in the sense of her having helped to make it. John Clephane lived by proverbs. One was that fools built houses for wise men to live in; so he had bought a fool’s house, furniture and all, and moved into it on his marriage. But if it had been built by a fool, Kate sometimes used to wonder, how was it that her husband found it to be planned and furnished so exactly as he would have chosen? He never tired of boasting of the fact, seemingly unconscious of the unflattering inference to be drawn; perhaps, if pressed, he would have said there was no contradiction, since the house had cost the fool a great deal to build, and him, the wise man, very little to buy. It had been, he was never tired of repeating, a bargain, the biggest kind of a bargain; and that, somehow, seemed a reason (again Kate didn’t see why) for leaving everything in it unchanged, even to the heraldic stained glass on the stairs and the Jacobean mantel in a drawing-room that ran to Aubusson.... And here it all was again, untouched, unworn--the only difference being that she, Kate, was installed in the visitor’s suite on the third floor (swung up to it in a little jewel-box of a lift), instead of occupying the rooms below which had once been “Papa’s and Mamma’s”. The change struck her at once--and the fact that Anne, taking her up, had first pressed the wrong button, the one for the floor below, and then reddened in correcting her mistake. The girl evidently guessed that her mother would prefer not to go back to those other rooms; her having done so gave Kate a quick thrill. “You don’t mind being so high up, mother?” “I like it ever so much better, dear.” “I’m so glad!” Anne was making an evident effort at expansiveness. “That’s jolly of you--like this we shall be on the same floor.” “Ah, you’ve kept the rooms you had--?” Kate didn’t know how to put it. “Yes: the old nursery. First it was turned into a schoolroom, then into my den. One gets attached to places. I never should have felt at home anywhere else. Come and see.” Ah, here, at last, in the grim middle-aged house, were youth and renovation! The nursery, having changed its use, had perforce had to change its appearance. Japanese walls of reddish gold; a few modern pictures; books; a budding wistaria in a vase of Corean pottery; big tables, capacious armchairs, an ungirlish absence of photographs and personal trifles. Not particularly original; but a sober handsome room, and comfortable, though so far from “cosy.” Kate wondered: “Is it her own idea, or is this what the new girl likes?” She recalled the pink and white trifles congesting her maiden bower, and felt as if a rather serious-minded son were showing her his study. An Airedale terrier, stretched before the fire, reinforced the impression. She didn’t believe many of the new girls had rooms like this. “It’s all your own idea, isn’t it?” she asked, almost shyly.