you?" asked the child, noticing her grandmother's ivory coloured
hand with blue veins, above the tray.

"If I had two husbands, child."

Ursula pondered a moment.

"Then you must wear both rings together?"

"Yes."

"Which was my grandfather's ring?"

The woman hesitated.

"This grandfather whom you knew? This was his ring, the red
one. The yellow one was your other grandfather's whom you never
knew."

Ursula looked interestedly at the two rings on the proffered
finger.

"Where did he buy it you?" she asked.

"This one? In Warsaw, I think."

"You didn't know my own grandfather then?"

"Not this grandfather."

Ursula pondered this fascinating intelligence.

"Did he have white whiskers as well?"

"No, his beard was dark. You have his brows, I think."

Ursula ceased and became self-conscious. She at once
identified herself with her Polish grandfather.

"And did he have brown eyes?"

"Yes, dark eyes. He was a clever man, as quick as a lion. He
was never still."

Lydia still resented Lensky. When she thought of him, she was
always younger than he, she was always twenty, or twenty-five,
and under his domination. He incorporated her in his ideas as if
she were not a person herself, as if she were just his
aide-de-camp, or part of his baggage, or one among his surgical
appliances. She still resented it. And he was always only
thirty: he had died when he was thirty-four. She did not feel
sorry for him. He was older than she. Yet she still ached in the
thought of those days.

"Did you like my first grandfather best?" asked Ursula.

"I liked them both," said the grandmother.

And, thinking, she became again Lensky's girl-bride. He was
of good family, of better family even than her own, for she was
half German. She was a young girl in a house of insecure
fortune. And he, an intellectual, a clever surgeon and
physician, had loved her. How she had looked up to him! She
remembered her first transports when he talked to her, the
important young man with the severe black beard. He had seemed
so wonderful, such an authority. After her own lax household,
his gravity and confident, hard authority seemed almost God-like
to her. For she had never known it in her life, all her
surroundings had been loose, lax, disordered, a welter.

"Miss Lydia, will you marry me?" he had said to her in
German, in his grave, yet tremulous voice. She had been afraid
of his dark eyes upon her. They did not see her, they were fi