, and to catch you tripping. Her lucidity was
remarkable; but it served to show up other people's strong points
rather than her own. Lucia did not impress you as being clever, and
Jewdwine, who had a clever man's natural distaste for clever women,
admired his cousin's intellect, as well he might, for it was he who
had taught her how to use it. Her sense of humour, too (for Lucia was
dangerously gifted), that sense which more than any of her senses can
wreck a woman--he would have liked her just as well if she had had
none; but some, no doubt, she needed, if only to save her from the
situations to which her kindness and her innocence exposed her; and
she had just the right amount and no more. Heavens! Supposing, without
it, she had met Keith Rickman and had yielded to the temptation to be
kind to him! Even in the heat Jewdwine shivered at the thought.

He put it from him, he put Rickman altogether from his mind. It was
not to think about Rickman that he came down to Court House. On a day
as hot as this, he wanted nothing but to keep cool. The gentle
oscillation of the hammock in the green shadows of the beech-tree
symbolized this attitude towards Rickman and all other ardent
questions.

Still, it was not disagreeable to know that if he could only make up
his mind to something very definite and irretrievable indeed, Court
House would one day be his. It was the only house in England that came
up to his idea of what a country house should be. A square Tudor
building with two short, gable-ended wings, thrown out at right angles
to its front; three friendly grey walls enclosing a little courtyard
made golden all day long with sunshine from the south. Court House was
older than anything near it except Harmouth Bridge and the Parish
Church. Standing apart in its own green lands, it looked older than
the young red earth beneath it, a mass upheaved from the grey
foundations of the hills. Its face, turned seawards, was rough and
pitted with the salt air; thousands upon thousands of lichens gave it
a greenish bloom, with here and there a rusty patch on groin and
gable. It contained the Harden Library, _the_ Harden Library, one of
the finest private collections in the country. It contained also his
cousin Lucia.

He had always loved Court House, but not always his cousin Lucia. The
scholarly descendant of a long line of scholars, Jewdwine knew that he
had been a favourite with his grandfather, Sir Joseph Harden, the
Master of La