The large entrance hall of Mambles was a serene and sunny place. It was filled with flowers and the still clear light of the retreating sun. A flight of shallow steps led to the upper regions of the house. Mr. Brett stood still for a moment, resting unseeing eyes upon his collection of household treasures. He had furnished Mambles to suit his taste and relinquished it to suit the tastes of others. There was nothing in it that had not the personal note of his selective mind, and there was nothing that he had regretted relinquishing to Elise and John. He walked up the shallow stairs slowly and with effort. “What I _can_ take easy I will,” he said to himself reflectively. Hermione had moved into Mr. Brett’s rooms in the left wing of the house. The rooms were neither as large nor as luxuriously furnished as those which had been prepared for her by Elise; but they had suited Mr. Brett. Mr. Brett knocked at the sitting-room door, a rustle of starched petticoats and the reproving face of Nurse Davies answered him. “The Princess is resting, and must not be disturbed,” she said with low-voiced emphasis. Mr. Brett’s eyes narrowed a little and then became curiously fixed. “You can go downstairs,” he said quietly, “and stay there until I send for you.” Nurse Davies was spoilt and authoritative, her profession had raised her in the social scale with a jerk, and some of the jerk adhered to her manners. She opened her lips to bring Mr. Brett to his senses, and then shut them again with an impression that her own senses were suddenly needed elsewhere. Mr. Brett was only an old man dying of diabetes, but as she explained afterwards downstairs to the housekeeper, his eyes were uncanny, and she had never been able to stand against anything at all queer. Mr. Brett stood aside until she had passed him and then walked into Hermione’s sitting room. Hermione lay on the sofa by the open window. She had had time to change into a white satin dressing gown trimmed with swansdown, and to look very ill. She was surrounded by smelling salts and heart tonics, her eyes were closed, but she had heard what had taken place between her father and Nurse Davies outside her door, and she would have recalled the latter if she had not thought that it would be wiser to appear beyond the power of speech. Mr. Brett looked at her speculatively, pulled forward a chair, hitched it backward, and picking up a yesterday’s “Times” proceeded to rustle its leaves briskly. Hermione’s eyelids trembled nervously. “Please Papa,” she murmured faintly, “do not make that noise, my nerves are too unstrung to bear it.” “Very well, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett slowly and distinctly, “if you want that I shall stop reading ‘The Times’ you can open your eyes and sit up. If you’re too exhausted to speak I shall sit right here and rustle. “Nobody has ever been known to suffer physically from the rustling of a newspaper and I’m going to see if maybe it won’t revive you.”