Eppie from her seat at the table faced the sky, the trees, the lawn. What a beautiful place, she was thinking. A place for life, sheltered, embowered. How she would have loved, as a child, those delicious rivulets of green that ran into the thick mysteries of shadow. How she would have loved to play dolls on a hot summer afternoon in the shade of the great yew-tree that stretched its dark branches half across the sky. The house, the garden, made her think of children; she saw white pinafores and golden heads glancing in and out among the trees and shrubs, and the vision of young life, blossoming, growing in security and sunlight, filled her thought with its pictured songs of innocence, while, at the same time, under the vision, she was feeling it all--all the beauty and sheltered sweetness--as dreadful in its emptiness, its worse than emptiness: a casket holding a death’s-head. She came back with something of a start to hear her work in the slums enthusiastically described by Mrs. Arley. “I thought it was only in novels that children clung to the heroine’s skirts. I never believed they clung in real life until seeing Eppie with her ragamuffins; they adore her.” This remark, to whose truth she assented by a vague smile, gave Eppie’s thoughts a further push that sent them seeing herself among the golden heads and white pinafores on the lawn at Cheylesford Lodge; and though the vision maintained its loving aunt relationship of the slums, there was now a throb and flutter in it, as though she held under her hand a strange wild bird that only her own will not to look kept hidden. These dreams were followed by a nightmare little episode. In the library, again, the talk was still an airy dialogue, Eppie, her eyes on the flames as she drank her coffee, still maintaining her ruminating silence. In the midst of her thoughts and their chatter, the door opened suddenly and Captain Palairet appeared on the threshold. His head neatly brushed, a sumptuous dressing-gown of padded and embroidered silk girt about him, he stood there with moist eyes and lips, faintly and incessantly shaking through all his frame, a troubling and startling figure. Gavan had been wondering all through the visit how his father was bearing the abandonment, and his appearance, he saw now, must have been the triumphant fruit of contest with the nurse whose face of helpless disapprobation hovered outside. Gavan went to his side, and, leaning on his son’s arm, the captain said that he had come to pay his respects to Mrs. Arley and to Miss Gifford. Taking Mrs. Arley’s hand, he earnestly reiterated his pleasure in welcoming her to his home.