) her first idea was to carry out her grandfather's
wishes; but it was not until Horace Jewdwine's last visit that her
idea became a determination. Horace had been strolling round the
library, turning over the books, not exactly with the covetous eye of
the heir apparent, but with that peculiar air of appropriation which
he affected in all matters of the intellect. In that mood Lucia had
found him irritating, and it had appeared that Horace had been
irritated, too. He had always felt a little sore about the library;
not that he really wanted it himself, but that he hated to see it in
the possession of such a rank barbarian as his uncle Frederick. A
person who, if his life depended on it, could not have told an Aldine
from an Elzevir. A person, incapable not only of appreciating valuable
books, but of taking ordinary decent care of them. There were gaps on
the shelves, a thing that he hated to see. Lucia, too; Lucia would
take books out by tens and twenties at a time and leave them lying all
over the house, and they would be stuck in again anywhere and anyhow.
No sort of method in their arrangement. No blinds, no glass doors to
protect them. He had pointed this out to Lucia, suggesting that it was
not a good thing to let too much dust accumulate on the tops of books,
neither was it altogether desirable that a strong south-westerly light
should play upon them all day long. Had she ever noticed how the
bindings were cracking and fading? For all this he seemed to be
blaming Lucia; and this, Lucia tried to persuade herself, was no great
matter; but when he asked for a catalogue, and she calmly told him
that there was none, he became involved in a sentence about a scandal
and a Vandal in which his opinion of his uncle Frederick unmistakably
appeared. He even forgot himself so far as to reflect on the sanity of
the late Master of Lazarus, at which point Lucia had left him to his
reflections.

She had not yet forgiven Horace for his interference that day, nor for
his remark about the scandal and the Vandal. As for his other
observations, they were insufferably rue. Hence her desperate efforts
to set the library in order before she went abroad; hence the secrecy
and haste with which she had applied to Rickman's, without asking
Horace's advice as she naturally would have done; hence, too, her vast
delight at the success of her unassisted scheme. Mr. Rickman was
turning out splendidly. If she had looked all through London she coul