Oh, it was—­it would be—­all right!  Lydia would see to it!

Lydia!  What a letter that was the post had brought him—­what a letter, and what a woman!  He sighed, thinking with a rueful though satiric spirit of all those protestations of hers in the summer, as to independence, a maiden life, and the rest.  And now she confessed that, from the beginning, it had been Faversham.  Why?  What had she seen in him?  The young man’s vanity no less than his love had been sore smitten.  But the pain was passing.  And she was, and would always be, a dear woman, to whom he was devoted.

He had pushed aside his letters, and was pacing his library.  Presently he turned and went into a small inner room, his own particular den, where he kept his college photographs, some stuffed and now decaying beasts, victims of his earliest sport, and many boxes of superb toy soldiers, the passion of his childhood.  There on the wall, screened from vulgar eyes, hung five water-colour drawings.  He went to look at them—­sentimentally.  Had the buying of anything in the world ever given him so much pleasure?

As he stood there, he was suddenly aware of a voice—­girl’s voice overhead, singing.  He turned and saw that the window was open to the mild December air.  No doubt the window on the story above was open too.  It was Felicia—­and the sound ceased as suddenly as it had risen.  Just a phrase, a stormy phrase, from an Italian folk-song which he had heard her sing to his mother.  He caught the usual words—­“morte"—­“amore." They were the staple of all her songs; to tell the truth he was often bored by them.  But the harsh, penetrating note—­as though it were a note of anger—­in the sudden sound, arrested him; and when it became silent, he still thought of it.  It was a strange, big voice for so small a creature.

He was glad to hear that she could sing again.  Nobody imagined that she could regret her father; but certainly the murder had sharply affected her nerves and imagination.  She had got hold of the local paper before they could keep it from her; and for nights afterward, according to his mother she had not been able to sleep.  He himself had tried of late to distract her.  He had asked her to ride with him; he had brought her books and flowers.  To no avail.  She was very short and shy with him; only happy, apparently, with his mother, to whom her devotion was extraordinary.  To her own mother, so Lady Tatham reported, she was as good—­as gentle even—­as her temperament allowed.  But there was a deep discrepancy between them.

As to Mrs. Melrose, whose life, according to the doctor, was only a matter of weeks, possibly months, Victoria believed that the shock of her old father’s death had affected her much more acutely than the murder of her husband.  She fretted perpetually that she had left her father to strangers, and that she could not help to lay him in his grave.  Felicia too had cried a little, but had soon consoled herself with the sensible reflection—­so it seemed to Tatham—­that at least her poor old Babbo was now out of his troubles.