"A rather nice old place, isn't it?" said Delia, an hour later, when
the elderly housekeeper, who had received them with what had seemed to
Delia's companion a quite unnecessary amount of fuss and family
feeling, had at last left them alone in the drawing-room, after taking
them over the house.

The girl spoke in a softened voice. She was standing thoughtfully by
the open window looking out, her hands clasping a chair behind her. Her
thin black dress, made short and plain, with a white frill at the open
neck and sleeves, by its very meagreness emphasized the young beauty of
the wearer,--a beauty full of significance, charged--over-charged--with
character. The attitude should have been one of repose; it was on the
contrary one of tension, suggesting a momentary balance only, of
impetuous forces. Delia was indeed suffering the onset of a wave of
feeling which had come upon her unexpectedly; for which she had not
prepared herself. This rambling old house with its quiet garden and
early Victorian furniture, had appealed to her in some profound and
touching way. Her childhood stirred again in her, and deep inherited
things. How well she remembered the low, spacious room, with its oak
wainscotting, its book-cases and its pictures! That crayon over the
writing-table of her grandmother in her white cap and shawl; her
grandfather's chair, and the old Bible and Prayer-book, beside it, from
which he used to read evening prayers; the stiff arm-chairs with their
faded chintz covers; the writing-table with its presentation inkstand;
the groups of silhouettes on the walls, her forbears of long ago; the
needlework on the fire-screen, in which, at nine years old, she had
been proud to embroider the white rose-bud still so lackadaisically
prominent; the stool on which she used to sit and knit beside her
grandmother; the place on the run where the old collie used to lie--she