. Here he paused, perceiving that the
double line of portraits began with a Vandyck and a Lely. Robert stood
with his hand on the brass rose knob of an oak door; in his eternal
attitude of affection, mingled with immobile respect, he waited for
the moment when Mr. Rickman should elect to tear himself from the Lely
and the Vandyck. The moment came, and Mr. Rickman heard himself
announced in a clear high voice as he passed over the threshold.

He found himself in a long oak-panelled room; that room whose west
window looked out across the courtyard to the east window of the
library. It was almost dark except for a small fire-lit, lamp-lit,
square at the far end. Lucia was sitting in a low chair by the
fireplace, under the tall shaded lamp, where the light fell full on
her shoulders. She was not alone. On a settee by the other side of the
open hearth sat the young lady who had intruded on his solitude in the
library. The presence of the young lady filled him with anxiety and
dismay.

He had to cross a vast, dim space before he reached that lighted
region. With what seemed to him a reeling and uncertain gait, he
approached over the perilously slippery parquet. Miss Harden rose and
came forward, mercifully cutting short that frightful passage from the
threshold to her chair.

Lucia had not carried out the intention she had announced to Kitty.
She had dressed in haste; but in Rickman's eyes the effect was that
which Kitty had seen fit to deprecate. She had made herself very
pretty indeed. He could not have given a very clear account of it,
could not have said whether the thing she wore, that floating,
sweeping, curling, trailing, folding and caressing garment were made
of grey gossamer in white or white in grey, but he was aware that it
showed how divinely her slender body carried its flower, her head;
showed that her arms, her throat, and the first sweep and swell of her
shoulders, were of one tone with the luminous pallor of her face.
Something in the dress, in her bearing and manner of approach, gave
her the assured charm of womanhood for the unfinished loveliness of
youth.

She introduced him to her friend Miss Palliser, whose green eyes
smiled in recognition. He bowed with the stiffness of a back
unaccustomed to that form of salutation. He hardly knew what happened
after that, till he found himself backing, nervously, ridiculously
backing into a lonely seat in the middle of the room.

The three were now grouped in