“‘Build it up with gold so fine’”—­

Veronica was happy; for she knew herself to be a cause of happiness.  Like Frances once, she was profoundly aware of her own happiness, and for the same reason.  It was, if you came to think of it, incredible.  It had been given to her, suddenly, when she was not looking for it, after she had got used to unhappiness.

As long as she could remember Veronica had been aware of herself.  Aware of herself, chiefly, not as a cause of happiness, but as a cause of embarrassment and uncertainty and trouble to three people, her father, her mother and Ferdie, just as they were causes of embarrassment and trouble and uncertainty to her.  They lived in a sort of violent mystery that she, incomprehensibly, was mixed up with.  As long as she could remember, her delicate, childish soul had quivered with the vibration of their incomprehensible and tiresome passions.  You could never tell what any of them really wanted, though among them they managed to create an atmosphere of most devastating want.  Only one thing she knew definitely—­that they didn’t want her.

She was altogether out of it except as a meaningless counter in their incomprehensible, grown-up game.  Her father didn’t want her; her mother didn’t want her very much; and though now and then Ferdie (who wasn’t any relation at all) behaved as if he wanted her, his wanting only made the other two want her less than ever.

There had been no peace or quietness or security in her little life of eleven years.  Their places (and they had had so many of them!) had never had any proper place for her.  She seemed to have spent most of her time in being turned out of one room because her father had come into it, and out of another because her mother wanted to be alone in it with Ferdie.  And nobody, except Ferdie sometimes, when they let him, ever wanted to be alone in any room with her.  She was so tired of the rooms where she was obliged to be always alone with herself or with the servants, though the servants were always kind.

Now, in Uncle Anthony’s house, there was always peace and quietness and an immense security.  She knew that, having taken her, they wouldn’t give her up.

She was utterly happy.

And the house, with its long, wainscoted rooms, its whiteness and darkness, with its gay, clean, shining chintzes, the delicate, faded rose stuffs, the deep blue and purple and green stuffs, and the blue and white of the old china, and its furniture of curious woods, the golden, the golden-brown, the black and the wine-coloured, bought by Anthony in many countries, the round concave mirrors, the pictures and the old bronzes, all the things that he had gathered together and laid up as treasure for his Sons; and the garden on the promontory, with its buttressed walls and its green lawn, its flower borders, and its tree of Heaven, saturated with memories, became for her, as they had become for Frances, the sanctuary, crowded with visible and tangible symbols, of the Happiness she adored.