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Rh three. Perhaps Lucia would tell her; Lucia and she were so very friendly, and the girl often talked to her confidentially. Yet she had hardly ever said anything about Lord Brayton, and Cathie felt in her bones—like rheumatism—that there was something to tell. And it was partly because she wanted to know so much that she felt it utterly impossible to ask her.

Sea View was a house in a row of sounding titles. On one side of them was Blenheim, on the other Balmoral, while farther down was Engadine, Chatsworth, and the houses of Devonshire and Stafford. Six rather steep steps led up from a small clanging gate to the front door, which had panels of stained glass in it. On one side was the drawing-room, which Elizabeth had made quite homey with a quantity of woollen head-rests, here really necessary, since without them the person who reclined on the American-cloth sofa would have instantly slid off it on to the floor. The mantelpiece was of the type known as handsome, and had imitation malachite plaques opulently let into a smooth hard substance that might easily be mistaken for black marble. Tiles of bright floral design framed the grate, which was filed with ribbons of polychromatic paper. In the bow-window, rather obstructing the view out, but equally obstructing the view of those without who wished to look in, was a marine telescope on three brass legs, which Aunt Elizabeth vaguely felt should have its cap permanently put on to it because of the bathers. It was true that you need not look at the bathers, but if you did they would appear so unpleasantly near. A bookcase contained apparently centuries of the Monthly Packet, bound in shiny brown calico, and, indeed, the whole house seemed to be rather full of hard and slippery furniture, oilcloth taking the place of carpets on the stairs, and the wall-paper being an imitation of marble that was otherwise happily unknown. A barometer and an umbrella-stand naturally stood in the hall, the former of a pessimistic nature that silently stuck to the fact that it was "stormy." But the whole house was, except when the kitchen-door had been left open, redolent of the freshness of the sea, and Lucia, who had again secured a bedroom at the very top of the house, lived as in the deck-cabin of a ship.

All these details of the place had a certain relevance with regard to the letter that Lucia had received, and which she thought over as she made herself tidy. For Lord Brayton, it appeared, before going to Scotland was to spend a few days at a house near