'Oh yes! but I wondered you had sent the old walnut press into that
lumber-room.'

'Is that satire?' said Louis, starting and looking in her face.

'I don't know what you mean.'

'I have a better right to ask what you mean by stigmatizing my
apartment as a lumber-room?'

'It was only what I saw from the door,' said Mary, a little confused,
but rallying and answering with spirit; 'and I must maintain that, if
you mean the room over the garden entrance, it is very like a lumber-
room.'

'Ah, Mary! you have not outgrown the delusions of your sex. Is an
Englishman's house his castle while housemaids maraud over it,
ransacking his possessions, irritating poor peaceful dust that only
wants to be let alone, sweeping away cherished cobwebs?'

'Oh, if you cherish cobwebs!' said Mary.

'Did not the fortunes of Scotland hang on a spider's thread? Did not
a cobweb save the life of Mahomet, or Ali, or a mediaeval saint--no
matter which? Was not a spider the solace of the Bastille? Have not
I lain for hours on a summer morning watching the tremulous lines of
the beautiful geometrical composition?'

'More shame for you!' said Mary, with a sort of dry humorous
bluntness.