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Cobwebs hung from the beams of the roof like the tattered regimental colours in a church, and here and there a piece of plaster had disappeared from above the panels of the walls. The remaining breadths of plaster bore countless round marks on its surface, suggesting that some man had designed a new and curious scheme of decoration, but had failed to realise his aims.

It was while Josephine and Pierce were examining these singular impressions on the wall that Guy explained their origin.

“The fact is,” he said, “we played a billiard or two last night, and as the tables hadn’t been used for five or six years, there was no chalk, but Galmyn, not to be beat, hit upon the notion of rubbing the tips of our cues against the plaster of the walls. The idea worked remarkably well.”

“It was worthy of the imagination, of a poet,” said Pierce, feeling the cushions of the table and laughing. “You must have had a joyous time over this table,” he added. “The cushions are clearly made of chilled steel.”

“They are a bit hard, aren’t they?” said Guy. “Yes, we found that they hadn’t much spring left in them.”

“Spring?” cried Mr. Galmyn. “Spring? No, there’s more that suggests winter than spring about them.”

“They’ll be all right when they are played on for some time,” said Guy.

“Oh, yes; in a year or two they’ll be like butter,” said Pierce encouragingly. “Your light wasn’t particularly good I should say?”

He pointed to a splash of wax about the size of a crown piece on the edge of one of the pockets.

“That chap is a regular Sherlock Holmes,” cried Guy. “He has found out that we played by the light of candles last night.”

On the shelf of the mantelpiece stood a pair of silver candelabra with remnants of candle still in the sockets, but a good bit out of the upright. Splashes of wax decorated the path from the billiard-table to the fireplace, suggesting the white stones alongside a carriage drive.

“Only one cue had a tip,” said Guy. “That made playing a bit tiresome: you see we had to pass it on for every stroke. We had best go on to the drawing-room. The ceiling is said to have been painted by Angelica Kauffmann—whoever she was.”

“I never saw a painted ceiling that poor Miss Angel hadn’t something to say to,” whispered Josephine as the party trooped through the open door.

It was as Lady Severn had said: the drawing-room stood sadly in need of dusting.

So, for that matter, did every other room, to say nothing of the stairs which were carpetless. The house was not quite a wreck; but one felt oneself instinctively quoting lines from Tennyson’s “Mariana” as one stood—it was scarcely safe to sit—in any of the rooms. There were bald patches upon some of the walls that had some time—long ago—been painted; but as a sort of compensation for this deficiency, as a member of the party remarked when it was pointed out to him there were several patches on the wall that were not bald but quite the contrary; for indeed the mildew had been at work increasing the forlorn appearance of the place.

But the new proprietor was very proud of everything—of the patches on the wall that marked where the plaster had become dislodged—of the hirsute patches that had been subject to the damp—of the bullet marks that he considered the visible signs of the duel fought with swords—nay, even of the rat that went scurrying across a room which he called the library, the moment the door was opened. Oh, there were plenty of rats, he declared—some fine fat healthy animals; he talked of them as though they were part of the live stock of the estate.

And in the drawing-room, after a depressing ramble through the dreary house, tea was served by a couple of elderly women (local) and it was certainly not deficient in strength. Neither was the cake (local) nor the china. Young Mr. Overton was already making a heroic attempt to introduce a scheme of economy that should tend to lessen the dead weight of the expense to which he had been put in purchasing the historic house.

Some members of the party wished that he had gone a little further in the same direction and had refrained from forcing his recherch entertainment upon them. They swallowed a portion of the black tea, however, and congratulating him upon the appearance of everything—for any one who was fond of developing a property, as he assured them he was, the state of the house and grounds left nothing to be desired—wondered secretly why he should have asked them to visit such a scene of desolation.

If Amber was among those who marvelled what his motive could be, her doubts were dispelled when she found herself alone with him at one of the drawingroom windows: the other members of the party had made their escape to the field of grass called by a daring figure of speech, a lawn; but she had allowed herself to be persuaded to sample, so to speak, a view from a side window. She admitted that the silver of the river gleaming between the yew hedges was very effective, and felt convinced that it would be improved by a judicious trimming of the shrubs.

“And you like the old place?” said he. “It has surprised you, hasn’t it?”

“Surprised me?—well,—oh, yes, it certainly surprised me,” she replied. “You are looking forward to a delightful time with it, are you not? I suppose it wouldn’t have had the same attraction for you if it had been in any better condition?”

“Amber,” he said in a whisper which had something of shyness lingering in its tremulous emotion. “Amber, I lay it all at your feet.”

She allowed him to catch her hand—she was too puzzled to keep it from him. Was this his way of saying good-bye, she wondered.

“I lay everything here at your feet; if you like it, it is all yours,” he cried.

“Don’t be a goose, Guy,” she said snatching her hand away. “What on earth would I do with such a place as this?”

“Come to it—be the chatelaine of my castle, reign here, Amber, as you do in my heart. I got the place cheap; but I shall spend money on it—by degrees—to make it worthy of your acceptance, Amber, my own—my——”

At this point a rat put in an appearance at the side of the door and rushed out through the open window.

“Was it for this you asked me to come here?” cried Amber, bravely ignoring what other girls might have regarded as a legitimate interruption of the scene. “Yes, you asked me to come here in order to make your absurd proposal to me. You should be ashamed of yourself, when you knew so well that I thought of our friendship as wholly disinterested. If I had, for one moment——”