“Oh, yes!” Elise interrupted gratefully. “I never knew there were so many before!” “But you know now,” said Hermione tenderly. “And I have seen something else besides, something which it is quite natural that in the first flush of your happiness you should have overlooked—Papa’s dire need.” “His what?” cried Elise aghast. “His need of me,” Hermione repeated briefly. Her eyes held Elise’s firmly. Elise could not have looked away if she had wanted to. She felt like a bird fascinated by something that is about to strike it. “Oh,” she faltered, “I thought Papa was happy.” “My dear!” said Hermione impatiently. “You never thought at all, your mind was—as it is even now—drugged by the miasma of marriage. Papa has been failing steadily. Mambles does not suit him. He needs a dry, bracing place with plenty of life in it. He has been living here alone with his double tragedy and there are five underground rivers in Sussex. I wonder he has not gone mad!” “Does he—is he—thinking of going away?” asked Elise apprehensively. “Yes, dear,” said Hermione impressively. “Papa is coming with me to Paris. I shall make his declining years the study of my life.” Elise said nothing. It was a hot, still day—not a leaf stirred in the garden, only above it the swallows took their circling, hurrying flights; they swept across the hedges, and through the red creepers that covered their nests beneath the eaves, with a speed which showed nothing but the quick-blown passage of their flight. Outside in the fields there was an occasional sharp whir and click of a frightened partridge. “I thought he liked quiet,” Elise murmured after a pause. “I daresay we shall have a garden in the Champs Elysées,” said Hermione loftily, “that will be quiet enough for him.” Mr. Brett appeared in the library door. He advanced slowly across the south terrace. “Are you warm enough out there?” he asked. “It’s what they call the heat of the day over here, isn’t it? I guess I’ll bring a fur rug along.” “It will be hotter in Paris,” said Hermione incisively. Mr. Brett drew forward a long, low chair and made himself thoroughly comfortable. “Why, yes,” he agreed leaning back and half closing his eyes to study the herbaceous borders at his ease. “I guess there’ll be hot moments over there and cold ones too, as far as that goes. Have you been telling Elise our little plans about Paris?” “Yes,” said Hermione, “I have told her, Papa.” Elise said nothing; her eyes rested intently on her father’s face. Mr. Brett drew his soft hat further forward over his eyes, and stretched out his legs in front of him. “Hermione,” he said, “is going to devote herself to my declining years. Say, Hermione, I tell you what it is, I want some of that devotion right now. As you are going into the house, I’d like you to tell my man to bring me out an overcoat.