ng, and her
desire for movement of some sort, that had brought her to this; and now
she grew angry with Lucy as well as with Jock, having gone so much
farther than she had intended to go. She turned from him to the books
which she had been languidly examining, and began to take them out one
after another, impatiently, as if searching for something. Jock sat and
looked at her for some time, with the same sort of deliberate
observation with which he used to regard her when he was a child, seeing
(as she had always felt) through and through her. But presently another
impulse swayed him. He got himself out behind his book, and suddenly
appeared by her side, startling her nerves, which were usually so firm.

"If you will tell me what you want," he said, "I'll get it for you. I
know where they all are. If it is French you want, they are up there. I
like going up the ladder," he added, half to himself.

Perhaps it was this confession of childishness, perhaps the unlooked-for
civility, that touched her. She turned round with a subdued half
frightened air, feeling that there was no telling how to take this
strange creature, and said, half apologetically, "I think I should like
a French--novel. They are not--so--long, you know, as the English," and
sat down in the chair he rolled towards her. Jock was at the top of the
ladder in a moment. She watched him, making a little comment in her own
mind about Tom's motive in placing books of this description in such a
place--in order to keep them out of Lucy's way, she said to herself.
Jock brought her down half a dozen to choose from, and even the eye of
Jock, who doubtless knew nothing about them, made Lady Randolph a little
more scrupulous than usual in choosing her book. She was one of those
women who like the piquancy and freedom of French fiction. She would say
to persons of like tastes that the English proprieties were tame beside
the other, and she thought herself old enough to be altogether beyond
any risk of harm. Perhaps this was why she divined Sir Tom's motive in
placing them at the top of the shelves; divined and approved, for though
she read all that came in her way, she would not have liked Lucy to
share that privilege. She said to Jock as he brought them to her,

"They are shorter than the English. I can't carry three volumes about,
you know; all these are in one; but I should not advise you to take to
this sort of reading, Jock."

"I don't want to," said Jock, briefly