She sat down beside him, to wait till he woke up.  It was a large room, with white doors and wainscoting.  Above the woodwork it was papered in pale yellow.  On the walls there were water-colors, prints, photographs, and painted porcelain plaques.  Over the bed, for decorative rather than devotional purposes, hung an old French ivory crucifix, while lower down was a silver holy-water stoup of Venetian make, that was oftenest used for matches.  It had been the late Mrs. Guion’s room, and expressed her taste.  It contained too many ornaments, too many knickknacks, too many mirrors, too many wardrobes, too many easy-chairs, too much embossed silver on the dressing-table, too much old porcelain, wherever there was a place for it.  Everything was costly, from the lace coverlet on the bed to the Persian rugs on the floor.

Olivia looked vaguely about the room, as on an apartment she had never before seen.  She found herself speculating as to the amount these elaborate furnishings would fetch if sold.  She recalled the fact, forgotten till now, that when the Berringtons’ belongings, purchased with reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a song.  She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill.  Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value.  She made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing on things that had no connection with herself.

Her eyes traveled back to her father.  With the muscles of the face relaxed in sleep, he looked old and jaded.  The mustache, which had not been waxed or curled that day, sagged at the corners, the mouth sagging under it.  Above the line of the beard the skin was mottled and puffy.  The lashes rested on his cheeks with the luxuriance of a girl’s, and the splendid eyebrows had all their fullness; but the lids twitched and quivered like those of a child that has fallen asleep during a fit of weeping.

It was this twitching that softened her, that compelled her to judge him from the most merciful point of view.  There was something piteous about him, something that silenced reproaches, that disarmed severity.  She had come up-stairs staggered, incredulous—­incredulous and yet convinced—­outraged, terrified; but now the appeal of that fagged face and those quivering lids was too strong for her.  It wrought in her not so much sympathy as comprehension, an understanding of him such as she had never before arrived at.  In his capacity of father she had loved him unrestrainedly, but admired him with reserves.  It was impossible not to love a parent so handsome, so genial, so kind, so generally admired; it was equally impossible not to criticize, however gently, a man with such a love of luxury, of unwarranted princeliness, and of florid display.  She was indulgent to his tastes in the degree to which a new and enlightened generation can be tolerant of the errors of that preceding it, but