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) her first idea was to carry out her grandfather’s wishes; but it was not until Horace Jewdwine’s last visit that her idea became a determination.  Horace had been strolling round the library, turning over the books, not exactly with the covetous eye of the heir apparent, but with that peculiar air of appropriation which he affected in all matters of the intellect.  In that mood Lucia had found him irritating, and it had appeared that Horace had been irritated, too.  He had always felt a little sore about the library; not that he really wanted it himself, but that he hated to see it in the possession of such a rank barbarian as his uncle Frederick.  A person who, if his life depended on it, could not have told an Aldine from an Elzevir.  A person, incapable not only of appreciating valuable books, but of taking ordinary decent care of them.  There were gaps on the shelves, a thing that he hated to see.  Lucia, too; Lucia would take books out by tens and twenties at a time and leave them lying all over the house, and they would be stuck in again anywhere and anyhow.  No sort of method in their arrangement.  No blinds, no glass doors to protect them.  He had pointed this out to Lucia, suggesting that it was not a good