“I don’t know who he was, dear,” observed Sheila meekly.

“He was a Roman emperor and a philosopher.  I suppose it was because he was an emperor that he found it easy to be a philosopher.  However, my aunt is nuts on Marcus Aurelius:  I beg your pardon, you don’t know the phrase.  My aunt makes Marcus Aurelius her Bible, and she is sure to read you bits from him, which you must believe, you know.”

“I will try,” said Sheila doubtfully, “but if—­”

“Oh, it has nothing to do with religion.  I don’t think anybody knows what Marcus Aurelius means, so you may as well believe it.  Ingram swears by him, but he is always full of odd crotchets.”

“Does Mr. Ingram believe in Marcus Aurelius?” said Sheila with some accession of interest.

“Why, he gave my aunt the book years ago—­confound him!—­and ever since she has been a nuisance to her friends.  For my own part, you know, I don’t believe that Marcus Aurelius was quite such an ass as Plato.  He talks the same sort of perpetual common-places, but it isn’t about the True and the Good and the Beautiful.  Would you like me to repeat to you one of the Dialogues of Plato—­about the immortality of Mr. Cole and the moral effect of the South Kensington Museum?”

“No, dear, I shouldn’t,” said Sheila.

“You deprive yourself of a treat, but never mind.  Here we are at my aunt’s house.”

Sheila timidly glanced at the place while her husband paid the cabman.  It was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house of dark brick, with some black green ivy at the foot of the walls, and with crimson curtains formally arranged in every one of the windows.  If Mrs. Lavender was a rich old lady, why did she live in such a gloomy building?  Sheila had seen beautiful white houses in all parts of London:  her own house, for example, was ever so much more cheerful than this one; and yet she had heard with awe of the value of this depressing little mansion in Kensington Gore.

The door was opened by a man, who showed them up stairs and announced their names.  Sheila’s heart beat quickly.  She entered the drawing-room with a sort of mist before her eyes, and found herself going forward to a lady who sat at the farther end.  She had a strangely vivid impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the withered kernel of a nut.  Or was she not like a cockatoo?  It was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the imagination of the girl got hold of that notion.  But the little old lady held her head like a cockatoo.  She had the hard, staring, observant and unimpressionable eyes of a cockatoo.  What was there, moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look like sticks of celery?

“Aunt Caroline, this is my wife.”

“I am glad to see you, dear,” said the old lady, giving her hand, but not rising.  “Sit down.  When you are a little nervous you ought to sit down.  Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece.”