men on top of the book-cases. His feet
sank in soft carpets. The smell of a pot of lilies mingled with the
smell of leather bindings. The light in the room, filtered through the
leaves of an overhanging creeper, was green and gold. It seemed to him
that he must have known such a room in some other world, where he had
not had to make watches all day with a glass screwed in his eye, but had
abundant leisure for books and beautiful things. Not but that there
might be worse things than the watchmaking. Over the works of the
watches, the fine little wheels and springs, Walter Gray thought hard,
thought incessantly. He thought, perhaps, the harder that he had neither
the leisure nor opportunity for putting down his thoughts on paper or
imparting them to another like-minded with himself. How his fellows
would have stared if they could have known the things that went on
inside Walter Gray's mind as he leant above his table, peering into the
interior of the watch-cases!

"Sit down, Mr. Gray," said Lady Anne graciously; "I want to talk to you
about Mary."

She approached the matter delicately, having wit enough to see that
Walter Gray was no common person. While she talked she looked with frank
admiration at his face: the fine, high, delicate nose; the arched brows,
like Mary's own; the over-development of the forehead. The dust of years
and worries lay thick upon his face, yet Lady Anne said to herself that
it was a beautiful face beneath the dust.

"I want to talk to you about Mary," she went on. "The child interests me
strongly. She is a fine vessel, this little daughter of yours. Pray
excuse me if I speak plainly. She has been doing far too much for her
age and her strength. Haven't you noticed that she is pulled down to
earth? Those babies, Mr. Gray--they are remarkably fat and heavy; they
are killing Mary."

"Her mother died of consumption," Walter Gray said, his face whitening
with terror.

"Ah!" the old lady thought; "she is the child of his heart. Those three
twins are merely the children of his home. That poor drudge of a mother
of theirs! Mary is the child of her father's heart and mind."

Then aloud: "You had better let me have her, Mr. Gray."

"Let you have her, Lady Anne? What would you do with my Mary?"

He looked scarcely less aghast than he had done a moment before at the
suggestion of consumption.

"Not separate her from you, Mr. Gray. This house is my home, and I am
not likely to leave it, except for