blotted accessory to innumerable literary lapses, with its contracted
space for the arms (she wrote only from the elbow down) and the
confusion of scrappy, scribbled sheets which had already become
literary remains. Leolin was also there, smoking a cigarette before
the fire and looking impudent even in his grief, sincere as it well
might have been.

To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; for the air
that he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that of his
mother's murderer. She lay silent for ever upstairs--as dead as an
unsuccessful book, and his swaggering erectness was a kind of symbol
of his having killed her. I wondered if he had already, with his
sister, been calculating what they could get for the poor papers on
the table; but I had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to the
scanty words of sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: "It's
miserable, miserable, yes; but she has left three books complete."
His words had the oddest effect; they converted the cramped little
room into a seat of trade and made the "book" wonderfully feasible.
He would certainly get all that could be got for the three. Lady
Luard explained to me that her husband had been with them but had had
to go down to the House. To her brother she explained that I was
going to write something, and to me again she made it clear that she
hoped I would "do mamma justice." She added that she didn't think
this had ever been done. She said to her brother: "Don't you think
there are some things he ought thoroughly to understand?" and on his
instantly exclaiming "Oh, thoroughly--thoroughly!" she went on,
rather austerely: "I mean about mamma's birth."

"Yes, and her connections," Leolin added.