ty history--and sat down with it. After a few
minutes' idleness Cecily rose, strolled into the hall, and thence out
into the garden. The hush of the house had become oppressive to her.

Yes, everything was very beautiful; she felt that again, and drank it
in, indulging her thirst so long unsatisfied. She had seen larger
places, such palaces as all the folk of London are allowed to see. The
present scene was new. And in the room above lay Addie Tristram in her
coffin--the lovely strange woman of whom her mother had told her. She
would not see Lady Tristram, but she seemed now to see all her life and
to be able to picture her, to understand why she did the things they
talked of, and what manner of woman she had been. She wandered to the
little bridge. The stream below was the Blent! Geographies might treat
the rivulet with scanty notice and with poor respect; to her it was
Jordan--the sacred river. Might not its god have been ancestor to all
the Tristrams? In such a place as this one could have many such fancies;
they would come to feed the mind and make it grow, to transform it into
something that could appreciate poetry. A big rose-tree climbed the wall
of the right wing. Who had picked its blossoms and through how many
years? Its flowers must often have adorned Addie Tristram's unsurpassed
loveliness. After the years of short commons there came this bountiful
feast to her soul. She felt herself a Tristram. A turn of chance might
have made all this her own. Her breath seemed to stop as she thought of
this. The idea now was far different from what it had sounded when Sloyd
gave it utterance in the tiny strip of garden behind the tiny house, and
she had greeted it with scorn and a mocking smile. She did not want all
this for her own; but she did want--how she wanted!--to be allowed to
stop and look at it, to stay long enough to make it part of her and
have it to carry back with her to her home between the King's Road and
the Fulham Road in London.

She crossed the bridge and walked up the valley. Twenty minutes brought
her to the Pool. It opened on her with a new surprise. The sun had just
left it and its darkness was touched by mystery. The steep wooded bank
opposite cast a dull heavy shadow across half the surface; the low
lapping of the water sounded like somebody whispering old secrets that
she seemed half to hear, garrulous histories of the dead--the dead whose
blood was in her veins--old glories, old scandals, old t