"And that is not all there is of him?" Tredennis asked.
She looked down at her feather screen, still smiling slightly.
"No," she answered, rather slowly, "not quite all; but even I don't quite know how much more there is, and Richard, who has known him at intervals all his life, lapses into speaking of him as 'a fellow with a grief.'"
Richard rose from his chair.
"Oh," he said, with much cheerfulness, "there is no denying that you two are the outgrowth of an effete civilization. You are always arriving at logical deductions concerning each other, and you have a tendency to the derision of all the softer emotions. You are a couple of world-worn creatures, and it is left to me to represent the youth and ardor of the family."
"That is true," said Bertha, in her soft, mocking voice. "We are battered and worldly wise—and we have no object."
"But I have," said Richard, "and if Colonel Tredennis will come upstairs with me, I will show him what a few of them are, if he takes an interest in such things."
"What," said Bertha,—"the laboratory, or the library, or"—
"All of them," he answered, "including the new collection." And he turned upon Tredennis the brightest imaginable smile.
Tredennis left his chair in response to it.