“Well, it’s worse on me than on anyone else,” said Laura, with the dominant spirit which caused Mr. Payne to shiver whenever she tilted against his wife.  “My room is just above, and I get the benefit of every note.”

The tune issuing from the library had changed suddenly into “The Land o’ the Leal,” and by the lamp light Uncle Percival could be seen, warm and red and breathless but still blissfully fluting to the sleeping Mr. Bleeker, whose face, fallen back against the velvet cushions, wore a broad, beatific smile.

“He gets his happiness from it at least,” persisted Laura.  “I suppose it’s a part of his life just as poetry is a part of mine, and to be happy at eighty-two one is obliged to be happy in an antedated fashion.”

Then, as the two aunts swept from the room to join Angela, Laura seated herself at Mr. Payne’s side and caught the hand which he outstretched.  Of all the family he had been her favourite since childhood, and she sometimes told herself that he was the only one who knew her as she really was—­who had ever penetrated behind her vivid outside armour of personality.  He was a man of great unsatisfied tenderness, who indulged a secret charity as another man might have indulged a vicious taste.  All his inclinations strained after goodness, and had he possessed the courage to follow the natural bent of his nature toward perfection he might have found his happiness in the peaceful paths of exalted virtue.  But the constant dropping of cynicism will extinguish an angel, and, instead of becoming a shining light to his generation, he had dwindled into a glow-worm beneath the billows of his wife’s velvet gown.

Now, as Laura held his hand, she bent upon him one of her long, meditative looks.  “Uncle Horace, of all this queer family is Aunt Rosa the queerest or am I?”

Mr. Payne shook his silvered head.  “I don’t think you’re a match for Rosa yet, my dear,” he answered with his gentle humour.  “Wait till you’ve turned seventy—­then we’ll see.”

“But I’m not like other women.  I don’t think their ways.  I don’t even want the things they want.”

The old man’s smile shone out as he patted her hand.  “That means, I suppose, that you don’t want to be married.  Who is it this time?  Ah, my child, you are born to be adored or to be hated.”

Without replying to his question, Laura lifted her full, dark eyes to his face.  As he met the intellectual power of her glance, he told himself that he understood the mysterious active principle of her personality—­how the many were repelled while the few returned to worship.  One felt her, was repulsed or possessed by her, even in her muteness.

“I don’t see how any one who has ever dreamed dreams,” she said at last, “could fall in love and marry—­it is so different—­so different.”

“So you have refused Mr. Wilberforce?  Well, well, he has reached the age when a poor lover may make an excellent friend—­and besides, to become Rosa’s mouthpiece for a moment, he is very rich.”