on very well with Addie Tristram's ancient
maid; she had the nobility at her fingers' ends and even knew something
about their pedigrees. Cecily was free, or assumed the freedom, to spend
her time with Harry, or, if he failed her, at least with and among the
things that belonged to him and had belonged to beautiful Addie Tristram
who had been like her--so Harry said, and Cecily treasured the thought,
teasing him now sometimes, as they grew intimate, with a purposed
repetition of a pose or trick that she had first displayed
unconsciously, and found had power to make him frown or smile. She
smiled herself in mischievous triumph when she hit her mark, or she
would break into the rich gurgle of delight that he remembered hearing
from his young mother when he himself was a child. The life was to her
all pure delight; she had no share in the thoughts that often darkened
his brow, no knowledge of the thing which again and again filled him
with that wondering despair.

On the evening of the day when Major Duplay went to Fairholme, the two
sat together in the garden after dinner. It was nine o'clock, a close
still night, with dark clouds now and then slowly moving off and on to
the face of a moon nearly full. They had been silent for some minutes,
sipping coffee. Cecily pointed to the row of windows in the left wing of
the house.

"I've never been there," she said. "What's that?"

"The Long Gallery--all one long room, you know," he answered.

"One room! All that! What's in it?"

"Well, everything mostly," he smiled. "All our treasures, and our
pictures, and so on."

"Why haven't you taken me there?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "You never asked me," he said.

"Well, will you take me there now--when you've finished your cigar?"

There was a pause before he answered, "Yes, if you like." He turned to
the servant who had come to take away the coffee. "Light up the Long
Gallery at once."

"Yes, my lord." A slight surprise broke through the respectful
acceptance of the order.

"It was lighted last for my mother, months ago," Harry said, as though
he were explaining his servant's surprise. "She sat there the last
evening before she took to her room."

"Is that why you haven't taken me there?"

"I expect it is." His tone was not very confident.

"And you don't much want to now?"

"No, I don't know that I do." But his reluctance seemed vague and weak.

"Oh, I must go," Cecily decided, "but you needn't come unless yo