a bookcase
with diamond-paned glass doors. On the broad marble mantelpiece were an
Empire clock and some old china, and over it a long gilt mirror with a
moulded device of lions drawing chariots and cupids flying above them.
On the walls, hung with a faded paper of roses, were water-colour
drawings, crayon portraits, some fine line engravings of well-known
pictures, a few photographs in Oxford frames. The bedroom furniture
proper was of heavy mahogany, a four-post bed hung with white dimity, a
wardrobe as big as a closet. Nothing was modern except the articles on
the dressing-table, nothing was very old.

Never later than eight o'clock the Squire would rise and go into his
dressing-room, and when Mrs. Clinton had dressed and in her orderly
fashion tidied her room she would sit at her table and read until it was
time to go down to breakfast. Whenever he got up earlier she got up
earlier too, and had longer to spend by the window open to the summer
morning, or in the winter with her books on the table lit by candles.
They were for the most part devotional books. But once the Squire had
come in to her very early one October morning when he was going
cub-hunting and found her reading _The Divine Comedy_ with a translation
and an Italian dictionary and grammar. He had talked of it downstairs as
a good joke: "Mother reading Dante--what?" and she had put away those
books.

She was a little paler than usual this morning, but the twins noticed no
difference in her manner. She kissed them and said, "You have heard that
Cicely went to London yesterday to stay with Muriel. Father is anxious
about her, and I am rather anxious too, but there is nothing really to
worry about. We must all behave as usual, and two of us at least mustn't
give any cause of complaint to-day."

She said this with a smile. It was nothing but a repetition of Miss
Bird's exhortation to hold their tongues and be good girls, but they
embraced her, and made fervent promises of good behaviour, which they
fully intended to keep. Then they read something for a few minutes with
their mother and left her to her own reading and her own thoughts.

The morning post brought no letter from Cicely, and again the Squire
remained standing while he read prayers. Immediately after breakfast he
went down to the Rectory, ostensibly to warn Tom and Grace not to talk,
actually to have an opportunity of talking himself to a fresh relay of
listeners. He expressed his surprise in