The Towers stood solemnly upon a Sussex hill amid park-like modern grounds, but the house cannot better be described—­it would be so wearisome for one thing—­than by saying that it was a cross between an overgrown, pretentious Norwood villa and one of those saturnine Institutes for cripples the train passes as it slinks ashamed through South London into Surrey.  It was “wealthily” furnished and at first sight imposing, but on closer acquaintance revealed a meager personality, barren and austere.  One looked for Rules and Regulations on the walls, all signed By Order.  The place was a prison that shut out “the world.”  There was, of course, no billiard-room, no smoking-room, no room for play of any kind, and the great hall at the back, once a chapel, which might have been used for dancing, theatricals, or other innocent amusements, was consecrated in his day to meetings of various kinds, chiefly brigades, temperance or missionary societies.  There was a harmonium at one end—­on the level floor—­a raised dais or platform at the other, and a gallery above for the servants, gardeners, and coachmen.  It was heated with hot-water pipes, and hung with Doré’s pictures, though these latter were soon removed and stored out of sight in the attics as being too unspiritual.  In polished, shiny wood, it was a representation in miniature of that poky exclusive Heaven he took about with him, externalizing it in all he did and planned, even in the grounds about the house.

Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel’s year of widowhood abroad—­an organ put into the big hall, the library made livable and re-catalogued—­when it was permissible to suppose she had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts, without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termed worldliness.  Mrs. Franklyn, as I remembered her, was a quiet little woman, shallow, perhaps, and easily influenced, but sincere as a dog and thorough in her faithful Friendship.  Her tastes at heart were catholic, and that heart was simple and unimaginative.  That she took up with the various movements of the day was sign merely that she was searching in her limited way for a belief that should bring her peace.  She was, in fact, a very ordinary woman, her caliber a little less than that of Frances.  I knew they used to discuss all kinds of theories together, but as these discussions never resulted in action, I had come to regard her as harmless.  Still, I was not sorry when she married, and I did not welcome now a renewal of the former intimacy.  The philanthropist she had given no children, or she would have made a good and sensible mother.  No doubt she would marry again.

“Mabel mentions that she’s been alone at The Towers since the end of August,” Frances told me at teatime; “and I’m sure she feels out of it and lonely.  It would be a kindness to go.  Besides, I always liked her.”