And the next thing she knew was that she was going downstairs, and presently she found herself standing in a big cold room, blinking in the bright lights he had switched on at the door. 'This,' he said, holding her by the arm, 'is the drawing-room. Isn't it a fine room.' And he explained the piano, and told her how he had found a button off, and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he drew her attention to the curtains,--he had no objections to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at the beginning, if she didn't think it a fine room. Lucy said it was a very fine room. 'You'll remember to put the cover on properly when you've finished playing the piano, won't you,' he said. 'Yes I will,' said Lucy. 'Only I don't play,' she added, remembering she didn't. 'That's all right then,' he said, relieved. They were still standing admiring the proportions of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of its lighting--'The test of good lighting,' said Wemyss, 'is that there shouldn't be a corner of a room in which a man of eighty can't read his newspaper'--when the gong began. 'Good Lord,' he said, looking at his watch, 'it'll be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we've had nothing at all of the afternoon, and I'd planned to show you so many things. Ah,' he said, turning and shaking his head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, 'whose fault has that been?' 'Mine,' said Lucy. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made her blink. 'Ah, my Lucy,' he said fondly, 'little waster of happiness--isn't it better simply to love your Everard than make him unhappy?' 'Much better,' said Lucy, blinking. There was no dressing for dinner at The Willows, for that, explained Wemyss, was the great joy of home, that you needn't ever do anything you don't want to in it, and therefore, he said, ten minutes' warning was ample for just washing one's hands. They washed their hands together in the big bedroom, because Wemyss disapproved of dressing-rooms at home even more strongly than on honeymoons in hotels. 'Nobody's going to separate me from my own woman,' he said, drying his hands and eyeing her with proud possessiveness while she dried hers; their basins stood side by side on the brown mottled marble of the washstand. 'Are they,' he said, as she dried in silence. 'No,' said Lucy. 'How's the head?' he said. 'Better,' she said. 'Who's got a forgiving husband?' he said. 'I have,' she said. 'Smile at me,' he said. She smiled at him. At dinner it was Vera who smiled, her changeless little strangled smile, with her eyes on Lucy. Lucy's seat had its back to Vera, but she knew she had only to turn her head to see her eyes fixed on her, smiling. No one else smiled; only Vera.