mmon between us,' she said. 'I have always
felt like you, and when--let me see, it must be fully twenty years ago
now--when, for the first time I really was perfectly free to furnish a
house to suit myself, you see I carried out my own ideas.'

'Oh, I thought Robin Redbreast was really old--furniture and all,' said
Jacinth with a slight tone of disappointment.

'So it is,' said Lady Myrtle. 'A good deal of it was here in the house,
and I had it done up--and some things I brought from Goodacre. My
brother-in-law who succeeded there kindly let me choose out things of my
favourite date. And they did not suit Goodacre, which is very grand and
heavy, and, to my mind, ugly.'

'I know what you mean,' said Jacinth, eagerly--'enormous mirrors with
huge gilt frames, and enormous gilt cornices over the window curtains,
and great big patterns on the carpets. There was a house near Stannesley
like that. It was interesting, something like an old palace, and grand;
but I shouldn't like to live in a house of that kind.'

'No, there seems nothing personal about it. One's own little self makes
no impression; you feel that you are just passing through it for the
time. Elvedon was rather like that, though the present tenants have
managed to lighten it a good deal. But our other place--I mean my own
family's place, up in the north, where I knew your dear
grandmother--though not so grand, is much more homelike than Elvedon. My
nephew and his wife live there when they are not in London. It is not so
expensive as the place here.'

Jacinth grew a little nervous and said exactly what she did not mean to
say.

'Are they not very rich, then?' and instantly blushed crimson, which
Lady Myrtle took as an expression of fear lest she had been indiscreet.
And she hastened to answer so as to put the girl at ease again.

'No,' she said; 'far from it. But they will be better off some day, and
it has been for their good that they have not been rich hitherto. The
sins of the fathers are visited on the children, as you cannot fail to
see for yourself, my dear, when you come to know more of life.' Lady
Myrtle sighed. 'My poor brother Elvedon was very weak and foolish, led
into all kinds of wild extravagance by--by another, much, much worse
than he;' and here the old lady's face hardened. 'And naturally,' she
went on, 'we--my father and I--dreaded what his son might turn out. Poor
Elvedon, my nephew I mean, is far from a clever man, but he is sensible
a