And in the middle of the chapel was the last Sir Charles Danvers, whom his brother, Sir George, the father of the present owner, had succeeded. The evening sun shone full on the kneeling soldier figure, leaning on its sword, and on the grave, clear-cut face, which had a look of Charles. The long, beautifully modelled hands, clasped over the battered steel sword-hilt, were like Charles's too. Ruth read the inscription on the low marble pedestal, relating how he had fallen in the taking of the Redan, and then looked again. And gradually a great feeling of pity rose in her heart for the family which had lived here for so many generations, and which seemed now so likely to die out. Providence does not seem to care much for old families, or to value long descent. Rather it seems to favor the new race—the Browns, and the Joneses, and the Robinsons, who yesterday were not, and who to-day elbow the old county families from the place which has known them from time immemorial.
"I suppose Molly will some day marry a Smith," said Ruth to herself, "and then it will be all over. I don't think I will come and see her here when she is married."
With which reflection she returned to the house, and, after disturbing Mr. Alwynn, who was deep in a catalogue of the Danvers manuscripts, in which it was his firm conviction that he should find some mention of the charters, she went into the library, and wondered which of the several thousands of books would interest her till the others came in.
The library was a large room, the walls of which were lined with books from the floor to the ceiling. In order to place the higher shelves within reach, a light balcony of polished oak ran round the four walls, about equidistant from the floor and the ceiling. Ruth went up the tiny corkscrew staircase in the wall, which led to the balcony, and settling herself comfortably in the low, wide window-seat, took out one volume after another of those that came within her reach. These shelves by the window where she was sitting had somehow a different look to the rest. Old books and new, white vellum and card-board, were herded together without any apparent order, and with no respect of bindings. Here a splendid morocco "Novum Organum" was pushed in beside a cheap and much worn edition of Marcus Aurelius; there Emerson and Plato and Shakespeare jostled each other on the same shelf, while, just below, "Don Quixote" was pressed into the uncongenial society of Carlyle on one side and Confucius on the other. As she pulled out one book after another, she noticed that the greater part of them had Charles's name in them. Ruth's curiosity was at once aroused. No doubt this was the little corner in his great house in which he chose to read, and these were his favorite books which he had arranged so close to his hand. If we can judge our fellow-creatures at all, which is doubtful, it is by the books they read, and by those which, having read, they read again. She looked at the various volumes in the window-seat beside her with new interest, and opened the first one she took up. It was a collection of translations from the Persian poets, gentlemen of the name of Jemshíd, Sádi, and Hafiz, of whom she had never heard. As she turned over the pages, she heard the ringing of horses' hoofs, and, looking out from her point of observation, saw Charles and Lady Grace cantering up the short wide approach, and clattering out of sight again behind the great stone archway. She turned back to her book, and was reading an ode here and there, wondering to see how the same thoughts that work within us to-day had lived with man so many hundred years ago, when her eye was caught by some writing on the margin of a page as she turned it over. A single sentence on the page was strongly underlined:
"True self-knowledge is knowledge of God."
Jemshíd was a wise man, Ruth thought, if he had found out that; and then she read, in Charles's clear handwriting in the margin:
"With this compare 'Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up if thou wilt ever dig.'—Marcus Aurelius."
At this moment Charles came into the library, and looked up to where she was sitting, half hidden from below by the thickness of the wall.
"What, studying?" he called, gayly. "I saw you sitting in the window as I rode up. I might have known that if you were lost sight of for half an hour you would be found improving yourself in some exasperating way." And he ran up the little stairs and came round the balcony towards her. "My own special books, I see—Eve, as usual, surreptitiously craving for a knowledge of good and evil. What have you got hold of?"
The remainder of the window-seat was full of books; so, to obtain a better view of what she was reading, he knelt down by her, and looked at the open book on her knee.