was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
I'm not like her."

"Who is _that_?" he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
white-haired Miss Frost.

"That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
loved her--she meant everything to me."

"She also dead--?"

"Yes, five years ago."

They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
piano, sounding a chord.

"Play," she said.

He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She
sat and played one of Kishwegin's pieces. He listened, faintly
smiling.

"Fine piano--eh?" he said, looking into her face.

"I like the tone," she said.

"Is it yours?"

"The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine--in name at least. I
don't know how father's affairs are really."

He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold
hair and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad
dark-blue sash.

"You?" he said.

"Do you recognize me?" she said. "Aren't I comical?"

She took him upstairs--first to the monumental bedroom.

"This was mother's room," she said. "Now it is mine."

He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.

He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the
quality of the fittings.

"It is a big house," he said. "Yours?"

"Mine in name," said Alvina. "Father left all to me--and his debts
as well, you see."

"Much debts?"

"Oh yes! I don't quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than
there is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning.
Perhaps there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is
paid."

She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to
him, who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating.
Then he smiled sourly.

"Bad job, eh, if it is all gone--!" he said.

"I don't mind, really, if I can live," she said.

He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced
up the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the
hall.

"A fine big house. Grand if it was yours," he said.

"I wish it were," she said rather pathetically, "if you like it so
much."

He shrug