"Novels, I suppose. No one ever reads anything but trash nowadays."
"They hadn't anything that mother put down. They never have. Miss Milton sits on the new novels and keeps them for Mrs. Sampson and Mrs. Combermere."
"Sits on them?"
"Yes--really sits on them. I saw her take one from under her skirt the other day when Mrs. Sampson asked for it. It was one that mother has wanted a long time."
The Archdeacon was angry. "I never heard anything so scandalous. I'll just see to that. What's the use of being on the Library Committee if that kind of thing happens? That woman shall go."
"Oh no! father!..."
"Of course she shall go. I never heard anything so dishonest in my life!..."
Joan remembered that little conversation until the end of her life. And with reason.
The door was flung open. Some one came hurriedly in, then stopped, with a sudden arrested impulse, looking at them. It was Falk.
Falk was a very good-looking man--fair hair, light blue eyes like his father's, slim and straight and quite obviously fearless. It was that quality of courage that struck every one who saw him; it was not only that he feared, it seemed, no one and nothing, but that he went a step further than that, spending his life in defying every one and everything, as a practised dueller might challenge every one he met in order to keep his play in practice. "I don't like young Brandon," Mrs. Sampson said. "He snorts contempt at you...."