'Reason with the Pasha--How innocent you are, Jess! How unworldly!
It always refreshes me to hear you talk.'





CHAPTER 4





Only twelve months ago Stephen Lord had renewed the lease of his
house for a period of seven years. Nancy, had she been aware of this
transaction, would assuredly have found courage to enter a protest,
but Mr. Lord consulted neither son nor daughter on any point of
business; but for this habit of acting silently, he would have
seemed to his children a still more arbitrary ruler than they
actually thought him.

The dwelling consisted of but eight rooms, one of which, situated at
the rear of the entrance passage, served Mr. Lord as sitting-room and
bed-chamber; it overlooked a small garden, and afforded a side
glimpse of the kitchen with its outer appurtenances. In the front
room the family took meals. Of the chambers in the storey above, one
was Nancy's, one her brother's; the third had, until six years ago,
been known as 'Grandmother's room,' and here its occupant, Stephen
Lord's mother, died at the age of seventy-eight. Wife of a Norfolk