“I am not sure of that,” said the young girl, smiling in answer. “For instance, if I had known this afternoon that you were a clergyman, I should have felt much more at ease about accepting your very kind services.”
“Should you? Well, then, you are at ease about it now. Come in, and tell me if there is anything more I can do for you.”
Olivia followed him into the most charmingly luxurious study she had ever seen. Everything in it was comfortable and handsome, in the best modern taste. The doors, mantelpiece, and panelling were of carved light oak, the furniture of the same, upholstered in dark-green morocco. There were portieres and curtains of dark tapestry, harmonizing with the carpet. The books, which filled four large and handsome bookcases, looked to the connoisseur too dainty to be touched by common fingers. Evidences of a woman’s presiding eye and hand were there too, Olivia fancied, in a certain graceful draping of the curtains, which seemed to her to betray neither the upholsterer nor the housemaid; in a tall bouquet of dried bulrushes and corn which stood in one corner; and in a small conservatory, full of dark palms and ferns, into which one of the windows opened. Everything was well chosen, everything harmonized with everything else, except the shabbily dressed figure in the centre, with his lean, dark, worn face, and hungry black eyes, and the tattered volume he held in his hand. Mr. Brander read the thought that flashed through his guest’s mind, and asked—
“Now, what is your first impression of this room?”
“It is very, very pretty,” said Olivia.
“Well, and what else?”
“Some one else had more to do with the arrangement of it than you.”
Olivia had never before felt so perfectly at ease with a stranger—so able to speak her passing thoughts out frankly and freely.
“Right; quite right. And now let me hear what sort of a guess you can make as to the person who had the arrangement of it.”
“It was a lady. Perhaps a lady who has had some art-school training; but one who can think for herself a little too. Not an every-day sort of lady, and yet not eccentric. One whom you would like to know, but whom you might be a little afraid of.”