analyzing power of mind which she had so long trained to attack all that
came to her. What might it not work with the new thing that had come? To
what pitiful shreds might it not be rent while he who only could renew
it was away? She looked ahead at the weeks and months to come, and she
was terribly afraid.

She went out of the room and up to her grandfather's chamber and knocked
there. The admirable Peters, who opened to her, said that his master had
not been very well, and was just then asleep, but as they spoke together
in low tones the old gentleman cried, testily, from within:

"Well? Well? Who's there? Who wants to see me? Who is it?"

Miss Benham went into the dim, shaded room, and when old David saw who
it was he sank back upon his pillows with a pacified growl. He certainly
looked ill, and he had grown thinner and whiter within the past month,
and the lines in his waxlike face seemed to be deeper scored.

The girl went up beside the bed and stood there a moment, after she had
bent over and kissed her grandfather's cheek, stroking with her hand the
absurdly gorgeous mandarin's jacket--an imperial yellow one this time.

"Isn't this new?" she asked. "I seem never to have seen this one before.
It's quite wonderful."

The old gentleman looked down at it with the pride of a little girl over
her first party frock. He came as near simpering as a fierce person of
eighty-six, with a square white beard, can come.

"Rather good--what? What?" said he. "Yes, it's new. De Vries sent it me.