of autumn
sunshine fell through the drawing-room windows of the Warden's lodgings.
These rays of sunshine lit up a notable portrait over the stone
fireplace. The portrait was of a Warden of the eighteenth century; a
fine fleshy face it was, full of the splendid noisy paganism of his
time. You can stand where you will in the room, but you cannot escape
the sardonic stare that comes from his relentless, wide-open, luminous
eyes. He seems as if he challenged you to stop and listen to the secret
of his double life--the life of a scholar and divine of easy morals.
Words seemed actually upon his lips, thoughts glowing in his eyes--and
yet--there is silence.

There was only one person in the room, a tall vigorous woman, still
handsome in spite of middle age, and she was looking up at the portrait
with her hands clasped behind her back. She was not thinking of the
portrait--her thoughts were too intent on something else. Her thoughts
indeed had nothing to do with the past--they were about the future, the
future of the new Warden, Dr. Middleton, the future of this only brother
of hers whom she loved more than anyone in the world--except her own
husband; a brother more than ten years younger than herself, to whom she
had been a mother till she married and who remained in her eyes a sort
of son, all the more precious to her because children had been denied
her.

She had come at her brother's call to arrange his new home for him. She
had arranged everything with sober economy, because Oxford was mourning.
She had retained all that she found endurable of the late Warden's. And
now she turned round and looked on her handiwork.

The room wore an air of comfort, it was devoid of all distressful
knick-knacks and it was arranged as were French "Salons" of the time of
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse for conversation, for groups of talkers, for
books and papers; the litter of culture. It was a drawing-room for
scholars in their leisure moments and for women to whom they could talk.
But there was no complaisance in Lady Dashwood's face as she looked at
her brother's drawing-room, just because her thoughts were deeply
occupied with his future. What was his future to be like? What was in
store for him? And these thoughts led her to give expression to a sudden
outspoken remark--unflattering to that future.

"And now, what woman is going to become mistress of this room?"

Lady Dashwood's voice had a harshness in it that startled even herself.