Two sitting-rooms were furnished, both large airy rooms looking upon the garden, and a bedroom and dressing-room up-stairs, which Arthur and his charge were to occupy.
The housekeeper and her handmaiden, who were to be his servants, were already installed, and had arranged in a certain fashion the new furniture that Arthur had sent down, jostling with the old, and his books.

As we sat, the first evening, with our cigarettes, in the dusk, watching the green sky over the quiet hills, a wonderful sensation of repose seemed to pass into one from the place.

"I feel as if I might be very happy here," said Arthur, "if I were allowed; and perhaps work out my old idea a little more about the meaning of external things." I was to return to London in a day or two, to see about any commission that might have been neglected, and to bring down the boy, who was now daily expected.
In my absence I received the following letter from Arthur.

The serene mood had had its reaction.
"I have told you, I think, of the depressing effect that a new place has on me till I get habituated to it.

There is a constant sense of unrest, just as there is about a new person, that racks the nerves.
"I have been very anxious and 'heavy' to-day, as the Psalms have it: dispirited about the future and the present, and remorseful about the past.