Long ago in Portugal there had been Quixanos doctors and scholars of distinction. When Joshua Quixano had been stranded high and dry by the tides of modern commercial competition, he had reverted to the ancestral pursuits, and for many years had devoted himself to collecting the materials for a monograph on the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
Absorbed in close and curious learning, in strange genealogical lore, full of a simple, abstract, unthinking piety, he let the world and life go by unheeded.
Judith remained with her father for some ten minutes. Conversation between them was never an easy matter, yet there was affection on both sides.
Quixano’s manners and customs were accepted facts, unalterable as natural laws, over which his children had never puzzled themselves. Some of them indeed had inherited to some extent the paternal temperament, but in most cases it had been overborne by the greater vitality of the Leunigers. But to-day the dusty scholar’s room, the dusty scholar, struck Judith with a new force. She looked about her wistfully, from the book-laden shelves, the paper-strewn tables, to her father’s face and eyes, whence shone forth clear and frank his spirit—one of the pure spirits of this world.
. . . .
When Judith reached home it was already dusk, and afternoon tea was going on in the morning-room.
Mrs. Leuniger was absent, and Rose officiated at the tea-table, while Adelaide, her feet on the fender, her gloves off, was preparing for herself an attack of indigestion with unlimited muffins and strong tea.
She had been paying calls in the neighbourhood, clad in the proof-mail of her very best manners, an uncomfortable garment which she had now thrown off, and was reclining, metaphorically speaking, in dressing-gown and slippers.
A burst of laughter from both young women greeted Judith’s ears as she entered.
“How late you are,” cried Rose. “What filial piety!”