change of circumstances between this year and the previous one
consisted in this development of attachment between the young people.
Otherwise, everything went on apparently as usual. With Ellinor the
course of the day was something like this: up early and into the garden
until breakfast time, when she made tea for her father and Miss Monro in
the dining-room, always taking care to lay a little nosegay of freshly-
gathered flowers by her father's plate. After breakfast, when the
conversation had been on general and indifferent subjects, Mr. Wilkins
withdrew into the little study so often mentioned. It opened out of a
passage that ran between the dining-room and the kitchen, on the left
hand of the hall. Corresponding to the dining-room on the other side of
the hall was the drawing-room, with its side-window serving as a door
into a conservatory, and this again opened into the library. Old Mr.
Wilkins had added a semicircular projection to the library, which was
lighted by a dome above, and showed off his son's Italian purchases of
sculpture. The library was by far the most striking and agreeable room
in the house; and the consequence was that the drawing-room was seldom
used, and had the aspect of cold discomfort common to apartments rarely
occupied. Mr. Wilkins's study, on the other side of the house, was also
an afterthought, built only a few years ago, and projecting from the
regularity of the outside wall; a little stone passage led to it from the
hall, small, narrow, and dark, and out of which no other door opened.

The study itself was a hexagon, one side window, one fireplace, and the
remaining four sides occupied with doors, two of which have been already
mentioned, another at the foot of the narrow winding stairs which led
straight into Mr. Wilkins's bedroom over the dining-room, and the fourth
opening into a path through the shrubbery to the right of the
flower-garden as you looked from the house. This path led through the
stable-yard, and then by a short cut right into Hamley, and brought you
out close to Mr. Wilkins's office; it was by this way he always went and
returned to his business. He used the study for a smoking and lounging
room principally, although he always spoke of it as a convenient place
for holding confidential communications with such of his clients as did
not like discussing their business within the possible hearing of all the
clerks in his office. By the outer door he could also