At the direct question, Olivia passed in review the aims and interests and pleasures of her past young life, and was abashed to find them a row of anæmic little phantoms. For years her head had been too full of duties. She regarded him for a moment or two in dismay, then she laughed in young defiance. “I suppose I’m keen on real live human beings. That’s my starting-point to the solution of the riddle of existence.” “We’ll see who gets there first,” said he. When the meal was over, she stood by the door which he held open for her and hesitated for a moment. “I wonder whether you would care to look over the house?” “I should immensely. But—if you’re not going to let it——” “You’ll be able, at any rate, to tell Mr. Trivett that he had no business to send you to such an old rabbit warren,” she replied, with some demureness. “I’m at your orders,” smiled Olifant. She played cicerone with her little business-like air of dignity, spoke in a learned fashion of water supply, flues, and boilers. Olifant looked wisely at the kitchen range, while Myra stood at impassive attention and the cook took refuge in the scullery. “These holes are to put saucepans on, I presume,” said he. “You’ve hit it exactly,” said Olivia. They went upstairs. On the threshold of the best bedroom he paused and cried, in some astonishment: “What an exquisite room!” “It was my mother’s,” said Olivia. “You can come in. It has a pleasant view over the garden.” Then Olifant, who had inspected the study, solved the puzzle of the drawing-room. There the man and woman had compromised. She had suffered him to hang his Victorian mirror and his screaming pictures in the midst of her delicate scheme. But here her taste reigned absolute. It was all so simple, so exquisite: a few bits of Chippendale and Sheraton, a few water-colours on the walls, a general impression for curtains and upholstery of faded rose brocade. On a table by the bed-head stood a little row of books in an inlaid stand. With the instinct of a bookish man, Olifant bent over to look at their backs, but first turned to Olivia. “May I?” “Of course.” Then she added, with a vague longing to impress on a stranger the wonder and beauty of the spirit that had created these surroundings: “My mother knew them all by heart, I think. Naturally she used to read other things and I used to read aloud to her—she was interested in everything till the day of her death—but these books were part of her life.” There were: _Marcus Aurelius_, _Lord Herbert of Cherbury_, _The Imitation of Christ_, _Christina Rossetti_, the almost forgotten early seventeenth century _Arthur Warwick_ (“_Spare Minutes; or, Resolved Meditation and Premeditated Resolutions_”), _Crabbe_ . . . a dozen volumes or so. Olifant picked out one. “And this, too? The _Pensées de Pascal_?” “She loved it best,” said Olivia.