as for this that the green of the lawn
was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the
drawing-room where Lady Channice stood so white and so monotonous.

She was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness
though it was. The walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient
oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the
room seemed dark. The furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and
inappropriate. The room had been dismantled, and in place of the former
drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays
from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs
predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places;
and there were three lugubrious sofas to match.

By degrees, during her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady
Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her
limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial
things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars,
dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat
alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed,
the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye
here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. The removal of the
cases (they were large and heavy, and Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper, had
looked grimly disapproving)--was her crowning act of courage, and ever
since their departure she had breathed more freely. It had been easier
to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on
cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and
of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her,
and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to
indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put
them away, far less to look at them. After looking at them for some
years,--these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding
crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,--Lady Channice had
cared enough to put them away. She had not, either, to ask for Mrs.
Bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for
Mrs. Bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the
stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. With her own hands she
incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau
and turned