You are a purist, my dear Brandolin," says Lady Dolgelly, who hates
him.

"'Purity, daughter of sweet virtues mild!'" murmurs Brandolin. "Alas, my
dear ladies, I cannot hope that she dwells with _me_ in any form! When
she has a home in your own gentle breasts, who can hope that she would
ever take shelter in a man's?"

"How impertinent and how nasty he is!" thinks the lady; and she detests
him a little more cordially than before. There is not a very good
feeling towards him among any of the ladies at Surrenden: he does not
make love to them, he does not endeavor to alter existing arrangements
in his favor; it is generally felt that he would not care to do so. What
can you expect from a man who sits half his days in a library?

The Surrenden library is well stored, an elegant and lettered lord of
the eighteenth century having been a bibliophile. It is a charming room,
panelled with inlaid woods, and with a ceiling painted after Tiepolo;
the bookcases are built into the wall, so that the books look _chez
eux_, and are not mere lodgers or visitors; oriel windows look out on to
a portion of the garden laid out by Beaumont. One window has been cut
down to the ground, an anachronism and innovation indeed, somewhat
impairing the uniformity of the room. The present Lady Usk had it done,
but one forgives her the sacrilege when one feels how pleasant it is to
walk out from the mellow shadows of the library on to the smooth-shaven
grass and gather a rose with one hand whilst holding an
eighteenth-century author with the other.

It is in the smaller library adjacent, filled with modern volumes, that
five-o'clock tea is always to be had, with all the abundant demoralizing
abominations of caviare, kuemmel, etc. It is a gay room, with
_dessus-des-portes_ after Watteau and every variety of couch and of
lounging-chair. "Reading made easy" somebody calls it. But there is
little reading done either in it or in the big library: Brandolin when
he goes there finds himself usually alone, and can commune as he chooses
with Latin philosophy and Gaulois wit.

"You _used_ to read, George?" he says to his host, in expostulation.

"Yes, I used,--ages ago," says Usk, with a yawn.

Brandolin looks at him with curiosity.

"I can understand a man who has never read," he replies, "but I cannot
understand a man losing the taste for reading if he has ever had it. One
can dwell contented in B[oe]otia if one has never been out of it, but to
go back