w stairs
that led to her bedroom. She could not hear whether he went to his
library or not. She was glad that she did not meet anybody in the
corridor. The doors were shut.

She locked her door and went up to the dressing-table. The little oval
picture case was lying there. She laid her hand upon it, but did not
move it. She stood, pressing her fingers upon it. Then she moved away.
Even the memory of the past was fading from her life; her future would
contain nothing--to remember.

She moved about the room. Wasn't duty enough to fill her life? Wasn't it
enough for her to know that she was helping in her small way to build up
the future of the race? Why could she not be content with that? Perhaps,
when white hairs came and wrinkles, and her prime was past, she might be
content! But until then....

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MORAL CLAIMS OF AN UMBRELLA

The ghost was, so to speak, dead, as far as any mention of him was made
at the Lodgings. But in the servants' quarters he was very much alive.

The housemaid, who had promised not to tell "any one" that Miss Scott
had seen a ghost, kept her word with literal strictness, by telling
every one.

Robinson was of opinion that the general question of ghosts was still an
open one. Also that he had never heard in his time, or his father's, of
the Barber's ghost actually appearing in the Warden's library. When the
maids expressed alarm, he reproved them with a grumbling scorn. If
ghosts did ever appear, he felt that the Lodgings had a first-class
claim to one; ghosts were "classy," he argued. Had any one ever heard
tell of a ghost haunting a red brick villa or a dissenting chapel?

Louise had gathered up the story without difficulty, but she had secret
doubts whether Miss Scott might not have invented the whole thing. She
did not put much faith in Miss Scott. Now, if Lady Dashwood had seen the
ghost, that would have been another matter!

What really excited Louise was the story that the Barber came to warn
Wardens of an approaching disaster. Now Louise was in any case prepared
to believe that "disasters" might easily be born and bred in places
like the Lodgings and in a city like Oxford; but in addition to all this
there had been and was something going on in the Lodgings lately that
was distressing Lady Dashwood, something in the behaviour of the Warden!
A disaster! Hein?

When she returned from St. Aldates, Gwendolen Scott had had only time to
sit down in a chair and