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‘Some of them are extremely peculiar,’ said Mrs. Touchett;
‘he has left considerable sums to persons I never heard of.
He gave me a list, and I asked then who some of them were,
and he told me they were people who at various times had
seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn’t like
him, for he hasn’t left you a penny. It was his opinion that
you had been handsomely treated by his father, which I’m
bound to say I think you were-though I don’t mean that I
ever heard him complain of it. The pictures are to be dis-
persed; he has distributed them about, one by one, as little
keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Lord
Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his
library? It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your
friend Miss Stackpole-’in recognition of her services to lit-
erature.’ Does he mean her following him up from Rome?
Was that a service to literature? It contains a great many
rare and valuable books, and as she can’t carry it about the
world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction.
She will sell it of course at Christie’s, and with the proceeds
she’ll set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to litera-
ture?’
This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the
little interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary
to submit on her arrival. Besides, she had never been less
interested in literature than to-day, as she found when she
occasionally took down from the shelf one of the rare and
valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She
was quite unable to read; her attention had never been so
little at her command. One afternoon, in the library, about

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