And the fate of Athelstan’s sketch was symptomatic.  Mrs. Maiden’s house had been considered perfect, up to the time of her death.  Rachel had at first been even intimidated by it; Louis had sincerely praised it.  And indeed its perfection was an axiom of drawing-room conversation.  But as soon as Louis and Rachel began to look on the house with the eye of inhabitants, the axiom fell to a dogma, and the dogma was exploded.  The dreadful truth came out that Mrs. Maldon had shown a strange indifference to certain aspects of convenience, and that, in short, she must have been a peculiar old lady with ideas of her own.  Louis proved unanswerably that in the hitherto faultless parlour the furniture was ill arranged, and suddenly the sideboard and the Chesterfield had changed places, and all concerned had marvelled that Mrs. Maldon had for so long kept the Chesterfield where so obviously the sideboard ought to have been, and the sideboard where so obviously the Chesterfield ought to have been.

And still graver matters had come to light.  The house had an attic floor, which was unused and the scene of no activity except spring cleaning.  A previous owner, infected by the virus of modernity, had put a bath into one of the attics.  Now Mrs. Maldon, as experiments disclosed, had actually had the water cut off from the bath.  Eyebrows were lifted at the revelation of this caprice.  The restoration of the supply of water and the installing of a geyser were the only expenditures which thrifty Rachel had sanctioned in the way of rejuvenating the house.  Rachel had decided that the house must, at any rate for the present, be “made to do.”  That such a decision should be necessary astonished Rachel; and Mrs. Maldon would have been more than astonished to learn that the lady help, by fortitude and determination, was making her perfect house “do.”  As regards the household inventory, Rachel had been obliged to admit exceptions to her rule of endurance.  Perhaps her main reason for agreeing to live in the house had been that there would be no linen to buy.  But truly Mrs. Maldon’s notion of what constituted a sufficiency of—­for example—­towels, was quite too inadequate.  Louis protested that he could comfortably use all Mrs. Maldon’s towels in half a day.  More towels had to be obtained.  There were other shortages, but some of them were set right by means of veiled indications to prospective givers of gifts.

“You mean that ‘Garden of the Hesperides’ affair for up here, do you?” said Louis.

Rachel gazed round the bedchamber.  A memory of what it had been shot painfully through her mind.  For the room was profoundly changed in character.  Two narrow bedsteads given by Thomas Batchgrew, and described by Mrs. Tarns, in a moment of daring, as “flighty,” had taken the place of Mrs. Maldon’s bedstead, which was now in the spare room, the spare-room bedstead having been allotted to Mrs. Tams, and Rachel’s old bedstead sold.  Bright crocheted and embroidered wedding-presents enlivened the pale tones of the room.  The wardrobe, washstand, dressing-table, chairs, carpet, and ottoman remained.  But there were razors on the washstand and boot-trees under it; the wardrobe had been emptied, and filled on strange principles with strange raiment; and the Maldon family Bible, instead of being on the ottoman, was in the ottoman—­so as to be out of the dust.