of civilization itself, she briskly shut the door
of her taxi-cab, and was whirled off upon the first stage of her
pilgrimage.

The house was oddly different without her. Katharine found the maids
already in possession of her room, which they meant to clean thoroughly
during her absence. To Katharine it seemed as if they had brushed away
sixty years or so with the first flick of their damp dusters. It seemed
to her that the work she had tried to do in that room was being swept
into a very insignificant heap of dust. The china shepherdesses were
already shining from a bath of hot water. The writing-table might have
belonged to a professional man of methodical habits.

Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at work, Katharine
proceeded to her own room with the intention of looking through them,
perhaps, in the course of the morning. But she was met on the stairs
by Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals between each
step that Katharine began to feel her purpose dwindling before they had
reached the door. Cassandra leant over the banisters, and looked down
upon the Persian rug that lay on the floor of the hall.

"Doesn't everything look odd this morning?" she inquired. "Are you
really going to spend the morning with those dull old letters, because
if so--"

The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads of the most
sober of collectors, were laid upon a table, and, after a moment's
pause, Cassandra, looking grave all of a sudden, asked Katharine where
she should find the "History of England" by Lord Macaulay. It was
downstairs in Mr. Hilbery's study. The cousins descended together in
search of it. They diverged into the drawing-room for the good reason
that the door was open. The portrait of Richard Alardyce attracted their
attention.

"I wonder what he was like?" It was a question that Katharine had often
asked herself lately.

"Oh, a fraud like the rest of them--at least Henry says so," Cassandra
replied. "Though I don't believe everything Henry says," she added a
little defensively.

Down they went into Mr. Hilbery's study, where they began to look among
his books. So desultory was this examination that some fifteen minutes
failed to discover the work they were in search of.

"Must you read Macaulay's History, Cassandra?" Katharine asked, with a
stretch of her arms.

"I must," Cassandra replied briefly.

"Well, I'm going to leave you to look for it by yourself."

"Oh,