ring it; they stood out so against
the black panelling of the old room. It was full of oak chests and
bureaus and Chinese cabinets, and Madonnas in Italian frames, and red and
white ivory chessmen, and little bookcases with books in white vellum
with scarlet title-pieces, and family portraits, and saints in triptychs
on golden backgrounds, and murderous assegais and the skins and horns of
animals. And the leaves of the old elms stuffed up the low, mullioned
windows looking on the garden.

And somehow you were aware of great streams of empire and of race,
streams of august tradition; of sanctity and heroism and honour, and
beautiful looks and gentle ways and breeding, all meeting there.

I looked at the Thesigers and I looked at all these things, and I thought
again of Jevons--of Jevons as absolutely impossible. You may say it was
pure snobbishness to think of him in that way, and I daresay it was; but
there wasn't any other way.

It wasn't their tradition, you see, that appealed to me so much as their
behaviour. I don't think I ever met people who knew so well how to
behave.

They kept it up. All evening they behaved like people under some heavy
calamity which they ignored for the comfort of their guest and for their
own dignity. And yet, even if I hadn't known of their calamity, I must
have felt it in the air. They knew that I knew it; but that was all the
more reason why they should ignore it; they wanted to remove from me the
oppression of my knowledge.

During dinner, perhaps, you felt the tension of the catastrophe; any
guest who knew as much as I did was bound to be aware of it. It was in
little sudden, momentary silences, in the hushed voices and half-scared
movements of the butler and the parlourmaid, in the stiffness of the
Canon's lip, and in some shade of the elder girls' manner to Viola.

I remember how, in one of those silences, Norah, who sat facing me,
leaned forward and addressed me. She said, "Mr. Furnival, you've come
from Belgium, haven't you? Do tell me about it! I can't get a word out of
Viola."

I supposed they hadn't told Norah. They had spared the youngest. She was
only seventeen.

The butler and the parlourmaid, standing rigid by the sideboard, looked
at each other in their fright. Mrs. Thesiger saw them and flushed. But
Canon Thesiger, who had his back to them, observed that Belgium was a
large order, and that Mr. Furnival would have to tell her about it
afterwards.

But there was n