omise."

"Very well, then, I'll write him a note."

She wrote it, and sent Robert with it to the library.

"I suppose," said she, "it's about time to dress for dinner?"

"Don't make yourself too pretty, dear."

Lucia looked back through the doorway.

"I shall make myself as pretty as ever I can. He has had nothing but
ugly things to look at all his life."

Miss Palliser apostrophized the departing figure of her friend.

"Oh Lucy, Lucy, what an angelic little fool you _are_!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Half-past six, and Miss Harden had not yet appeared in the library. It
was the first time that Rickman had passed a whole day without seeing
her. He began to be uneasy, to wonder whether she were really ill. At
seven he was leaving the house as usual for his hotel when Robert
brought him a little three-cornered note.

"Dear Mr. Rickman," it said (Dear Mr. Rickman!) "you see I have
taken your advice, and given myself a holiday. I have spent it
very pleasantly--reading _Helen in Leuce_. It would give me much
pleasure if you would come in for coffee this evening, about
eight o'clock. We can then talk it over.

"Very truly yours,

"LUCIA HARDEN.

"You need only send a verbal answer."

A verbal answer? No. That would never do. He could not trust himself
with speech, but in writing he knew he was impeccable.

"Dear Miss Harden. How very kind of you! But I am sorry that you
did not give yourself a complete rest. I should be sorrier, if I
were not so grateful for the trouble you have taken. It will give
me great pleasure to come in this evening at the time you name.

"With many thanks, yours very truly,

"S.K. RICKMAN."

He was not pleased with it; it erred on the side of redundancy; he had
not attained the perfect utterance, the supreme simplicity. But he was
obliged to let it go. Two hours later Robert announced that coffee was
served in the drawing-room.

It seemed that to reach the drawing-room you had to cross the whole
length of the house from west to east. In this passage he realized
(what his mind had not greatly dwelt upon), the antiquity of the
Hardens, and the march of their splendid generations. Going from the
Tudor Library into the grim stone hall of the Court House, he took a
cold plunge backward into time. Thence his progress was
straightforward, bringing him into the Jacobean picture gallery that
cut the house from north to south