“I never tried to,” Constance answered.  “Why should I worry about unintelligible stuff that would give me no pleasure even if I could understand it?”

“Oh!  Oh! Don’t speak like that!” cried the other, distressfully.  “I’m sure you don’t mean it!”

“I care very little for poetry of any kind,” said Constance, in all sincerity.

“Oh, how I grieve to hear that!—­But then, of course we all have our special interests.  Yours is science, I know.  I’ve worked a good deal at science; of course one can’t possibly neglect it; it’s a simple duty to make oneself as many-sided as possible, don’t you think?  Just now, I’m giving half an hour before breakfast every day to Huxley’s book on the Crayfish.  Mr. Yabsley suggested it to me.  Not long ago he was in correspondence with Huxley about something—­ I don’t quite know what but he takes a great interest in Evolution.  Of course you know that volume on the Crayfish?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.  You arrange your day, I see, very methodically.”

“Oh, without method nothing can be done.  Of course I have a time-table.  I try to put in a great many things, but I’m sure it’s no use sitting down to any study for less than half an hour—­do you think so?  At present I can only give half an hour to Herbert Spencer—­I think I shall have to cut out my folk-lore to make more time for him.  Yet folk-lore is so fascinating!  Of course you delight in it?”

“I never had time for it at all,” replied Constance.

“Just now I’m quite excited about ghost-worship.  Mr. Yabsley doesn’t think it is sufficient to explain the origin of religious ideas.”

“Mr. Yabsley,” remarked Constance, “has pronounced opinions on most things?”

“Oh, he is very wide, indeed.  Very wide, and very thorough.  There’s no end to the examinations he has passed.  He’s thinking of taking the D. Litt at London; it’s awfully stiff, you know.”

When they parted, about eleven o’clock, Miss Tomalin went upstairs humming a passage from a Beethoven sonata.  She declared herself enchanted with her room, and hoped she might wake early, to make the coming day all the longer.

At ten next morning, Constance was summoned to the upstairs room where Lady Ogram sometimes sat when neither so unwell as to stay in bed nor quite well enough to come down.  A bad night had left the old lady with a ghastly visage, but she smiled with grim contentment as her secretary entered.

“Come, I want you to tell me what you talked about.  Where is she now?  What is she doing?”

“Miss Tomalin is in the library, rejoicing among the books.”

“She is very intellectual,” said Lady Ogram.  “I never knew anyone so keen about knowledge.  But what did you talk about last night?”

“Of very many things.  Canada and Northampton, religion and crayfish, Huxley and—­Yabsley.”

“Yabsley?  Who’s Yabsley?”

“A gentleman of Northampton, a man of light and leading, a great friend of Miss Tomalin’s.”