re, touching the
flowers in a vase, straightening reviews scattered on a table, she was
even able to smile again at him a smile almost kind, and keeping, before
him, as well as for the servants, all the advantage of composure.

That smile would often meet him throughout life, and so he would see
her, moving delicately and gracefully, making order and comeliness about
her, for many years. She set the key. It was the key of their future
life together, Holland knew, as he heard her say: "Do sit down and rest.
You must want your tea after that tiresome journey."

THE WHITE PAGODA

The drama of the drawing-rooms had begun years ago, but Owen Stacpole
did not come into it until the day on which his cousin Gwendolen, after
examining the box of bric-a-brac, remarked, refolding the last pieces of
china in their dusty newspapers, that they were rubbish, and silly
rubbish, too, of just the sort that Aunt Pickthorne had always
unerringly accumulated. The box had arrived that morning, a legacy from
this deceased relative; it had been brought up to the drawing-room and
placed upon a sheet near the fire, so that Mrs. Conyers might examine
its contents in comfort, and Owen, while he wrote at the black lacquer
bureau in the window, had been aware of Gwendolen's gibes and
exclamations behind him. Now, when she asserted that she would send the
whole futile collection down to Mr. Glazebrook and see if he would give
her enough for it to buy a pair of gloves with, Owen rose and limped to
join her and to look down at the wooden box into which she was
thrusting, with some vindictiveness, the dingy parcels.

"Have you looked at them all?" he inquired. "I forget--was your Aunt
Pickthorne a Mrs. or a Miss? And how long has it been since she died?"

"About six months, poor old thing. And these treasures have evidently
never been dusted since. She was a Mrs. Her husband was old Admiral
Pickthorne--don't you remember?--and they lived, after he retired, at
Cheltenham. Two more guileless Philistines I've never known. It used to
make me feel quite ill to go and stay with them when I was a girl. I've
hardly been at all since then, and that's probably why she selected all
the most hideous objects in her drawing-room to leave me. How well I
remember that drawing-room! Crocheted antimacassars; and a round,
mahogany centre-table on which a lamp used to stand in the evening; and
the wall-paper of frosted robin's-egg-blue, with stuffed birds in ca