ther's handwriting, others in faded ink, and there were a few
ancient pocket-books, filled with manuscript of a still earlier time,
and in these the ink was glossier and blacker than any writing fluids
supplied by stationers of later days. Darnell had hung up the portrait
of the ancestor in this room, and had bought a solid kitchen table and
a chair; so that Mrs. Darnell, seeing him looking over his old
documents, half thought of naming the room 'Mr. Darnell's study.' He had
not glanced at these relics of his family for many years, but from the
hour when the rainy morning sent him to them, he remained constant to
research till the end of the holidays. It was a new interest, and he
began to fashion in his mind a faint picture of his forefathers, and of
their life in that grey old house in the river valley, in the western
land of wells and streams and dark and ancient woods. And there were
stranger things than mere notes on family history amongst that odd
litter of old disregarded papers, and when he went back to his work in
the City some of the men fancied that he was in some vague manner
changed in appearance; but he only laughed when they asked him where he
had been and what he had been doing with himself. But Mary noticed that
every evening he spent at least an hour in the box-room; she was rather
sorry at the waste of time involved in reading old papers about dead
people. And one afternoon, as they were out together on a somewhat
dreary walk towards Acton, Darnell stopped at a hopeless second-hand
bookshop, and after scanning the rows of shabby books in the window,
went in and purchased two volumes. They proved to be a Latin dictionary
and grammar, and she was surprised to hear her husband declare his
intention of acquiring the Latin language.

But, indeed, all his conduct impressed her as indefinably altered; and
she began to be a little alarmed, though she could scarcely have formed
her fears in words. But she knew that in some way that was all
indefined and beyond the grasp of her thought their lives had altered
since the summer, and no single thing wore quite the same aspect as
before. If she looked out into the dull street with its rare loiterers,
it was the same and yet it had altered, and if she opened the window in
the early morning the wind that entered came with a changed breath that
spoke some message that she could not understand. And day by day passed
by in the old course, and not even the four walls were