e wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish,
which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had been
able greatly to subdue.

Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes--a woman's angry protest against
the tyranny of knowledge.

"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin," she said, with
emphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose she
will do as she pleases."

The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn to
shrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foot
hanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone with
diamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink,
touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyes
which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses
of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and
slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow,
the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch
of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of
intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl,
but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified--her
eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was
wilder, her voice a little shriller than of old.

While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around them
still lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps.

"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer,
looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laughed
uncomfortably.

"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helped
himself to a cup of tea.

"_Thank_ you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes.

"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down
beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have
them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to
her!"

Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were
born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed
the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move
them."

"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We
can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"

"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but
we're not going to.