ad a
quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures
than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old
streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces
of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless,
in the carvings on stone; the jewelled facades of Orvieto and Siena,
the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.

She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a
pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and
as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what
proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment,
with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and
writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the
mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily
conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of
the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every
district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept
his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite
room with the guests.

Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and
flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that
his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and
found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter
of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at
random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was
an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies,
containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative
press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the
unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed
her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that
this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written,
doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for
a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from
Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared
to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if
he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made
American millionaire.

His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the