ly, and he looked melodramatic and very
ridiculous. He was crushing his bowler in his hands.

"No. I will keep them!" She spoke slowly and quite calmly, as though
she had thought it all out before. "They are valuable. Now you must
go. This has been silly enough--Good-bye."

She turned to the window and he was dismissed. His pride came to the
rescue; he would not let her see that he cared, so he went--without
another word.

She stood in the same position, and watched him go down the street. He
was walking quickly and at the same time a little furtively, as though
he was afraid of meeting acquaintances. She turned away from the
window, and then, suddenly, knelt on the floor with her head in her
hands. She sobbed miserably, hopelessly, with her hands pressed
against her face.

And Mrs. Feverel found her kneeling there in the sunlight an hour later.

"Dahlia," she said softly, "Dahlia!"

The girl looked up. "He has gone, mother," she said. "And he is never
coming back. I sent him away."

And Mrs. Feverel said nothing.

CHAPTER VII

There were times when Harry felt curiously, impressively, the age of
the house. It was not all of it old, it had been added to from time to
time by successive Trojans; but there had, from the earliest days, been
a stronghold on the hill overlooking the sea and keeping guard.

He had had a wonderful pride in it on his return, but now he began to
feel as though he had no right in it. Surely if any one had a right to
such a heritage it was he, but they had isolated him and told him that
he had no place there. The gardens, the corners and battlements of the
house, the great cliff falling sheer to the sea, had had no welcome for
him, and when he had claimed his succession they had refused him. He
was beginning to give the stocks and stones of the House a personal
existence. Sometimes at night, when the moon gave the place grey
shadows and white lights, or in the early morning when the first birds
were crying in the trees and the sea was slowly taking colour from the
rising sun, in the perfect stillness and beauty of those hours the
house had seemed to speak to him with a new voice. He imagined,
fantastically at times, that the white statues in the garden watched
him with grave eyes, wondering what place he would take in the
chronicles of the House.

It was Sunday afternoon, and he was alone in the library. That was a
room that had always appealed to him, with it