ng woman in Europe. Of all that
Miss Roots had so laboriously imparted to her she retained, not a
smattering, but a masterly selection. And now at four and twenty she
had what is called a beautiful view of life; with that exciting book
which her father kept so sedulously out of her reach she was
acquainted as it were through anthologies and translations. For
anything Lucia knew to the contrary, life might be all bursts of lyric
rapture and noble sequences of selected prose. She was even in danger
of trusting too much to her own inspired version of certain passages.
But anthologies are not always representative, and nobody knew better
than Lucia that the best translations sometimes fail to give the
spirit of the original.

Something of this spirit she caught from her father's brilliant and
disturbing presence. Lucia adored her father. He brought into her life
an element of uncertainty and freedom that saved it from the tyranny
of books. It was a perpetual coming and going. A dozen times in a year
Sir Frederick hurled himself from Harmouth to London, from London to
the Continent, and from the Continent back again to Harmouth, to
recruit. The very transience of his appearances and Lucia's ignorance
of all that lay behind them preserved her in her attitude of
adoration.

Sir Frederick took precious good care that it should not be disturbed
by the familiarity born of frequent intercourse, that she should see
him only in his moods of unnatural sobriety. And as he left Lucia to
the library so much, it was to be supposed that, in defiance of the
family tradition, he would leave the library to Lucia. But after all
Sir Frederick had some respect for the family tradition. When it
seemed only too likely that a woman would inherit the Harden Library,
he stepped in and saved it from that supreme disgrace by the happy
expedient of a bill of sale. Otherwise his natural inclination would
have been to leave it to his daughter, for whom he had more or less
affection, rather than to his nephew, for whom he had none.

As it happened, it was Horace Jewdwine who was responsible for the
labour which Lucia had so impetuously undertaken. Lucia was aware that
her grandfather's desire had been to rearrange and catalogue the
library. When she came of age and found herself mistress of a tiny
income (derived from capital left by her mother, carefully tied up to
keep it from Sir Frederick, and enlarged by regular accumulations at
compound interest