"I can't insure you," she replied, "and I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense," and she shivered slightly.
"You surely don't believe, in the nineteenth century——" he began; but she interrupted him, saying almost petulantly:
"You'd grow to believe anything if you lived in a place like this. On the whole, I think you'd better leave the door alone," she added, as he began to finger the nails thoughtfully, "you're too clever, you might succeed."
"If I do," he assured her, "I'll promise to keep my discoveries to myself."
"You'd better confine your attentions to the library; it's much more worthy of your consideration," she replied, evidently wishing to change the subject.
"With pleasure," acquiesced Stanley, following her lead. "And what am I to discover there?"
"Nothing. Now I come to think of it, it's already pre-empted."
"Who are our literary lights?"
"Lady Isabelle McLane and Lieutenant Kingsland."
"I should never have suspected it of either of them," he replied, manifestly surprised, for Kingsland's literary tastes, as evidenced on the Thames, had not been of an elevated nature; and Lady Isabelle was too conventional and well-ordered a person to care to read much or widely.