“Oh, no, he’s forty-five, but he seems older, somehow. Well, anyway, he’s romantic and poetic and imaginative. And he has a fad for Coleridge. Collects editions of him and all that. So he built his enormous and gorgeous house and called it Pleasure Dome. And the deep arm of the lake, which is right beneath his own window, he calls the Sunless Sea. And it is. It’s on the north side of the house, and so hemmed in with great firs and cypresses that the sun never gets a look-in.”

“Must make a delightful sleeping room!”

“Oh, there’s plenty of sunlight from the east and west. His rooms are in a wing, a long L, and you bet they have sunlight and all other modern improvements. The house is a palace.”

“That all sounds nice for Mrs. Dallas.”

“It is. And Samp is so drivellingly, so besottedly in love with her, that she will have everything her own way when she takes up the sceptre.”

“Nobody else in the family? The Tracy family, I mean.”

“No. Not now. There was. You see, Tracy’s sister, Mrs. Remsen, and her daughter used to live with him. Then Mrs. Remsen died, about a year ago, or a little more, and then Mrs. Dallas came into the picture, and some think it was at her request Tracy put his niece out——”

“The brute!”

“Oh, come now, you don’t know anything about it. Alma is a lovely girl, but she’s a high-handed sort—all the Tracys are—and her uncle gave her a beautiful home on a near-by island——”

“On an island? A girl, alone!”

“She has with her an old family nurse, who took care of her as a baby, and old nurse’s husband is her gardener and houseman, and old nurse’s daughter is her waitress, and oh, Lord, Alma Remsen is fixed all right.”

“But on an island!”

“But she likes being on an island. It was her own choice. She didn’t want to stay with the new wife any more than the new wife wanted to have her. You always fly off half-cocked!”

“All right, all right,” I soothed him. “Tell me more.”

“Well, that’s all about Alma. She’s a general favourite, has lots of friends, and all that, but of course, when the new mistress of Pleasure Dome comes in at the door, Alma’s prospects will fly out of the window.”

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