No need to ask what they were.  No woman’s work had been seen in the house since I could recollect it.  I gathered them up reverently and put them back.  I could see, ignorant as I was, that the bit of knitting was something for an infant.  What could I do less than put it to my lips?  It had been left in the doing—­for me.

“Yes, I think this is the best place,” my father said a minute after, in his usual tone.

We placed it there that evening with our own hands.  The picture was large, and in a heavy frame, but my father would let no one help me but himself.  And then, with a superstition for which I never could give any reason even to myself, having removed the packings, we closed and locked the door, leaving the candles about the room, in their soft, strange illumination, lighting the first night of her return to her old place.

That night no more was said.  My father went to his room early, which was not his habit.  He had never, however, accustomed me to sit late with him in the library.  I had a little study or smoking-room of my own, in which all my special treasures were, the collections of my travels and my favorite books,—­and where I always sat after prayers, a ceremonial which was regularly kept up in the house.  I retired as usual this night to my room, and, as usual, read,—­but to-night somewhat vaguely, often pausing to think.  When it was quite late, I went out by the glass door to the lawn, and walked round the house, with the intention of looking in at the drawing-room windows, as I had done when a child.  But I had forgotten that these windows were all shuttered at night; and nothing but a faint penetration of the light within through the crevices bore witness to the installment of the new dweller there.

In the morning my father was entirely himself again.  He told me without emotion of the manner in which he had obtained the picture.  It had belonged to my mother’s family, and had fallen eventually into the hands of a cousin of hers, resident abroad,—­“A man whom I did not like, and who did not like me,” my father said; “there was, or had been, some rivalry, he thought:  a mistake, but he was never aware of that.  He refused all my requests to have a copy made.  You may suppose, Phil, that I wished this very much.  Had I succeeded, you would have been acquainted, at least, with your mother’s appearance, and need not have sustained this shock.  But he would not consent.  It gave him, I think, a certain pleasure to think that he had the only picture.  But now he is dead, and out of remorse, or with some other intention, has left it to me.”

“That looks like kindness,” said I.

“Yes; or something else.  He might have thought that by so doing he was establishing a claim upon me,” my father said; but he did not seem disposed to add any more.  On whose behalf he meant to establish a claim I did not know, nor who the man was who had laid us under so great an obligation on his death-bed.  He had established a claim on me at least; though, as he was dead, I could not see on whose behalf it was.  And my father said nothing more; he seemed to dislike the subject.  When I attempted to return to it, he had recourse to his letters or his newspapers.  Evidently he had made up his mind to say no more.