minance of George Eliot's pensive rather
than delightful countenance in her bedroom and the array of all that
lady's works in a lusciously tooled pink leather, was due to her equally
reckless choice of a favourite author. She had said too that Nelson was
her favourite historical character, but Sir Isaac with a delicate
jealousy had preferred to have this heroic but regrettably immoral
personality represented in his home only by an engraving of the Battle
of Copenhagen....

She stood surveying this room, and her husband watched her eagerly. She
was, he felt, impressed at last!...

Certainly she had never seen such a bedroom in her life. By comparison
even with the largest of the hotel apartments they had occupied it was
vast; it had writing-tables and a dainty bookcase and a blushing sofa,
and dressing-tables and a bureau and a rose-red screen and three large
windows. Her thoughts went back to the narrow little bedroom at Penge
with which she had hitherto been so entirely content. Her own few little
books, a photograph or so,--they'd never dare to come here, even if she
dared to bring them.

"Here," said Sir Isaac, flinging open a white door, "is your
dressing-room."

She was chiefly aware of a huge white bath standing on a marble slab
under a window of crinkled pink-stained glass, and of a wide space of
tiled floor with white fur rugs.

"And here," he said, opening a panel that was covered by wall paper, "is
_my_ door."

"Yes," he said to the question in her eyes, "that's my room. You got
this one--for your own. It's how people do now. People of our
position.... There's no lock."

He shut the door slowly again and surveyed the splendours he had made
with infinite satisfaction.

"All right?" he said, "isn't it?"... He turned to the pearl for which
the casket was made, and slipped an arm about her waist. His arm
tightened.

"Got a kiss for me, Elly?" he whispered.

At this moment, a gong almost worthy of Snagsby summoned them to tea. It
came booming in to them with a vast officious arrogance that brooked no
denial. It made one understand the imperatives of the Last Trump, albeit
with a greater dignity.... There was a little awkward pause.

"I'm so dirty and trainy," she said, disengaging herself from his arm.
"And we ought to go to tea."

Sec.3

The same exceptional aptitude of Sir Isaac for detailed administration
that had relieved his wife from the need of furnishing and arranging a
home, made the b