“Isn’t it wonderful,” she said, turning to her governess, “how perfect they both are! I don’t know which is most perfect; only, of course I can’t help it, but I like father’s way best.”
“I should think you did,” replied Miss Winstead. “Shall I go on reading you the new fairy tale, Sibyl?”
“Not to-day, thank you, Miss Winstead,” answered Sibyl.
“Then what shall I read?”
“I don’t think anything, just now. Father has been reading the most beautiful inciting things about a saint called John, who wrote a story about the New Jerusalem. Did you ever read it?”
“You mean a story out of the Bible, from the Book of Revelation?”
“Perhaps so; I don’t quite know what part of the Bible. Oh, it’s most wonderful inciting, and father reads so splendid. It’s about what happens to people when their wings are grown long. Did you never read about it, Miss Winstead? The New Jerusalem is so lovely, with streets paved with gold, same as the gold in the gold mine, you know, and gates all made of big pearls, each gate one big whole pearl. I won’t ask you to read about it, ’cos I like father’s way of reading best; but it’s all most wonderful and beautiful.”
The child lay with a smile on her face. She could see a little way across the garden from where she lay.
Meanwhile Ogilvie and his wife had gone downstairs. When they reached the wide central hall, he asked her to accompany him into a room which was meant to be a library. It looked out toward the back of the house, and was not quite in the same absolute order as the other beautiful rooms were in. Ogilvie perhaps chose it for that reason.
The moment they had both got into the room he closed the door, and turned and faced his wife.