"He visits a great deal among the poor," remarked Richard, "and I think that's good for him, provided, of course, that he does it with discretion."
"I suppose it is," said Lydia, though she added immediately, "but aren't the poor often very immoral?"
A reply was on Richard's lips, but before he could utter it, the door opened and Daniel entered with the slow, almost timid, step into which he had schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As he saw Richard a smile—his old boyish smile of peculiar sweetness—came to his lips, but without speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the books he carried.
"If those are old books, won't you remember to take them up to your room, Daniel?" said Lydia, in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. "They make such a litter in the library."
He started slightly, a nervous affection which had increased in the last months, and looked at her with an apologetic glance. As he stood there she had again that singular sensation of which she had spoken to Richard, as if he were gazing through her and not at her.
"I beg your pardon," he answered, "I remember now that I left some here yesterday."
"Oh, it doesn't matter, of course," she responded pleasantly, "it's only that I like to keep the house tidy, you know."
"They do make rather a mess," he admitted, and gathering them up again, he carried them out of the room and up the staircase.
They watched his bent gray head disappear between the damask curtains in the doorway, and then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of his slow gentle tread on the floor above.
"There was always too much of the dreamer about him, even as a child," commented Richard, when the door was heard to close over their heads, "but he seems contented enough now with his old books, doesn't he?"