matched by the absurdity of your English
grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to
sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.
I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers
already at the thought of Cumbria."

Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high
ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the
sitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.

"Well, I didn't build the house!" thought the agent with a quiet
exasperation in his mind, the result of much correspondence; and having
completed his tour of inspection, which included the modest supper now
cooking according to Mr. Melrose's orders--Mrs. Melrose had had nothing
to do with it--in the vast and distant kitchen, the young man hung up his
wet overcoat, sat himself down by the hall fire, drew a newspaper from
his pocket, and deliberately applied himself to it, till the carriage
should arrive.

Meanwhile through the rain and wind outside, the expected owner of
Threlfall Tower and his wife and child were being driven through the
endless and intricate lanes which divided the main road between Keswick
and Pengarth from the Tower.

The carriage contained Mr. Melrose, Mrs. Melrose, their infant daughter
aged sixteen months, and her Italian nurse, Anastasia Doni.

There was still some gray light left, but the little lady who sat
dismally on her husband's right, occasionally peering through the window,
could make nothing of the landscape, because of the driving scuds of rain
which drenched the carriage windows, as though in their mad charges from
the trailing clouds in front, they disputed every inch of the miry way
with the newcomers. From the wet ground itself there seemed to rise a
livid storm-light, reflecting the last gleams of day, and showing the
dreary road winding ahead, dim and snakelike through intermittent trees.

"Edmund!" said the lady suddenly, in a high thin voice, as though the
words burst from her--"If the water by that mill they talked about is
really over the road, I shall get out at once!"

"What?--into it?" The gentleman beside her laughed. "I don't remember, my
dear, that swimming is one of your accomplishments. Do you propose to
hang the baby round your neck?"

"Of course I should take her too! I won't run any risks at all with her!
It would be simply wicked to take such a small child into danger." But
t