of living, came before him. Above
her white dress, he could see her white and finely angular shoulders as
she swept down to pick up that wretched crutch.--Yes, she was a being
of singular contrasts, of remarkable capacity, both mental and
practical! And she might have a heart--she might. Once or twice it had
looked rather like it.--But, after all, what did that matter? The
feminine side of things was excluded. Besides he supposed she was half
engaged to Ludovic Quayle.

Dickie yawned. He was sleepy. His meditations became unprofitable. He
had best go to bed.

"And the devil fly away with all women, saving and excepting my well
beloved mother," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCERNING THE BROTHERHOOD FOUNDED BY RICHARD CALMADY, AND OTHER
MATTERS OF SOME INTEREST

It was still very sultry. All the windows of the red drawing-room
stood wide open. Outside the thunder rain fell, straight as ramrods,
in big globular drops, which spattered upon the gray quarries and
splashed on the pink and lilac, lemon-yellow, scarlet and orange
of the pot plants,--hydrangeas, pelargoniums, and early-flowering
chrysanthemums,--set, three deep, along the base of the house wall, the
whole length of the terrace front. The atmosphere was thick. Masses of
purple cloud, lurid light crowning their summits, boiled up out of the
southeast. But the worst of the storm was already over, and the parched
land, grateful for the downpour of rain, exhaled a whiteness of
smoke--as in thanksgiving from off some altar of incense. On the grass
slopes of the near park a flight of rooks had alighted. They stalked
and strode over the withered turf with a self-important, quaintly
clerical air, seeking provender, but, so far, finding none, since the
moisture had not yet sufficiently penetrated the hardened soil for
earth-worms and kindred creeping-things to move surfacewards.

Within, the red drawing-room had suffered conspicuous change. For, on
Richard moving down-stairs to his old quarters in the southwestern wing
of the house, Lady Calmady had judged it an act of love, rather than of
desecration, to restore this long-disused apartment to its former
employment. Adjoining the dining-room,--connecting this last with the
billiard-room, summer-parlour, and garden-hall,--this room was
convenient to assemble in before, and sit in for a while after, meals.
Richard would thereby be saved superfluous journeys up-stairs. And this
act of restitution, which was also i