’But there’s no doubt about it.  I’ve asked Thyrza.  She knows that was her mother’s name, and she knows that her mother was a teacher.’

’In that case I’ve nothing more to say.  You’re a wonderful old lady, as I’ve often told you.’

’I have a good memory, Gilbert.  You can’t think how pleased I am that I found out that.  I feel more interest in them than ever.  And the child seemed so pleased too!  She could scarcely believe that I’d known her mother before she was born.  She wants me to tell her and her sister all I can remember.  Now, isn’t it nice?’

Gilbert smiled, but made no further remark.  The evening silence set in.

CHAPTER VII

THE WORK IN PROGRESS

On the sheltered side of Eastbourne, just at the springing of the downs as you climb towards Beachy Head, is a spacious and heavy-looking stone house, with pillared porch, oriel windows on the ground floor of the front, and a square turret rising above the fine row of chestnuts which flanks the road.  It was built some forty years ago, its only neighbours then being a few rustic cottages; recently there has sprung up a suburb of comely red-brick houses, linking it with the visitors’ quarter of Eastbourne.  The builder and first proprietor, a gentleman whose dignity derived from Mark Lane, called the house Odessa Lodge; at his death it passed by purchase into the hands of people to whom this name seemed something worse than inappropriate, and the abode was henceforth known as The Chestnuts.

One morning early in November, three months after the date of that letter which he addressed to Gilbert Grail and other working men of Lambeth, our friend Egremont arrived from town at Eastbourne station and was conveyed thence by fly to the house of which I speak.  He inquired for Mrs. Ormonde.  That lady was not within, but would shortly return from her morning drive.  Egremont followed the servant to the library and prepared to wait.

The room was handsomely furnished and more than passably supplied with books, which inspection showed to be not only such as one expects to find in the library of a country house, but to a great extent works of very modern issue, arguing in their possessor the catholicity of taste which our time encourages.  The solid books which form the substratum of every collection were brought together by Mr. Brook Ormonde, in the first instance at his house in Devonshire Square; when failing health compelled him to leave London, the town establishment was broken up, and until his death, three years later, the family resided wholly at The Chestnuts.  During those years the library grew appreciably, for the son of the house, Horace Ormonde, had just come forth from the academic curriculum with a vast appetite for literature.  His mother, moreover, was of the women who read.  Whilst Mr. Ormonde was taking a lingering farewell of the world and its concerns, these two active minds were busy