er the wigged and
corseleted heroes on the walls represented Mr. Moffatt's ancestors, and
why, if they did, he looked so little like them. The dining-room beyond
was more amusing, because busy servants were already laying the long
table. It was too early for the florist, and the centre of the table was
empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer
fruits-figs, strawberries and big blushing nectarines. Between them
stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, and little dishes full
of sweets; and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces
of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which
sprinkled the green marble walls with starlike reflections.

After a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of
white-sleeved footmen, and of listening to the butler's vociferated
orders, and strayed back into the library. The habit of solitude had
given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found
a book anywhere--any kind of a book--he would have forgotten the long
hours and the empty house. But the tables in the library held only
massive unused inkstands and immense immaculate blotters; not a single
volume had slipped its golden prison.

His loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he suddenly thought of Mrs.
Heeny's clippings. His mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight,
had brought the masseuse back from New York with her, and Mrs. Heeny,
with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the
grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. She had been loud in her joy at
seeing her little friend that morning, but four years had passed since
their last parting, and her personality had grown remote to him. He saw
too many people, and they too often disappeared and were replaced by
others: his scattered affections had ended by concentrating themselves
on the charming image of the gentleman he called his French father; and
since his French father had vanished no one else seemed to matter much
to him.

"Oh, well," Mrs. Heeny had said, discerning the reluctance under his
civil greeting, "I guess you're as strange here as I am, and we're both
pretty strange to each other. You just go and look round, and see what
a lovely home your Ma's got to live in; and when you get tired of that,
come up here to me and I'll give you a look at my clippings."

The word woke a train of dormant associations, and Paul saw himself
seated on a dingy carpet, between t