arrange them, make them beautify one's home, and then perhaps pass the evening by oneself with them to bear one company—them and the dreams you weave about them, of the dews they were out with, and the winds that have whispered in them. But, but one does want someone to talk to about them. I assure you, Lord Brayton, you are going to be a perfect godsend to us all. Now tell me more of your plans."
Never perhaps had Edgar Brayton been so stirred out of himself. He was definitely interested in this beautiful, vivid girl, not with regard to how she struck him, but with regard to what she herself was.
"No, tell me my plans yourself," he said; "you will make poems out of them."
Lucia cast him a quick glance, and then looked away again over the garden.
"Well, I will prophesy, then," she said. "You will live in your great beautiful house, and year by year it will get more beautiful. You will have pictures there and marbles, and Eastern carpets and exquisite furniture, and all that as a matter of course, but the atmosphere is what will be getting more beautiful, more full of appreciation and criticism and culture. You will bring great parties of great people down from town, and one day there will be acting, and one day a concert, and one day perhaps you will all sit all day in the gardens, talking, reconstructing Life as it should be. How busy you will be, too, for you will be forever thinking of all those who are dependent on you, and bringing beauty into their lives, for I am sure you will care about them immensely. You will make your house the head, the fountain of a new artistic and intellectual movement; you will teach people to see and hear, you will make them understand that it is wiser to think than to eat, and better to be busy than lazy. Lazy! that is the root fault of so many of us! We won't be stirred. But for Heaven's sake, stir us, Lord Brayton! Stir us up like you stir toffee, don't you know, or else it sticks to the side and is burnt and uneatable. Heavens! How lucky you are! What opportunities! What a big life you can make! And now I've quite finished, thank you, and if I have been impertinent, please forget it."
"You have not been impertinent," said he, "but I hope I shall never forget what you have said to me. But I want a little more yet"
He paused, again leaning forward, again almost absorbed, and
