d not go into the kitchen--the dear old place seemed
deserted while he was there.

This woke up Iden for the moment. First there was a rummaging about in
his old bureau, and a laborious writing of letters, or adding up of
figures. Next there was a great personal getting up, a bath, clean
linen, shaving, and donning of clothes packed away these years past. In
two hours or so Iden came down another man, astonishingly changed, quite
a gentleman in every respect, and so handsome in Amaryllis's eyes.
Indeed, he was really handsome still, and to her, of course, wonderfully
so. If only he would always dress like that!

Iden walked into Woolhorton, but all these preparations had so consumed
the time that the bank was shut, the solicitor's offices closed, and
there was no means of raising any money that evening. The son passed the
father's doorstep--the worn stone step, ground by the generations of
customers--he saw the light behind the blind in the little room where
Grandfather Iden sat--he might, had he paused and listened, have heard
the old man poke the fire, the twenty-thousand-guinea-man--the son
passed on, and continued his lonely walk home, the home that held a
bailiff.

A makeshift bed had to be made up for the bailiff in the kitchen, and
there he remained the night, and was up and had lit the fire for Luce
the servant before she was down. The man was certainly very civil, but
still there was the shock of it.

Early in the morning Iden went into town again, saw his solicitor, and
got a cheque--it was only five-and-twenty or thirty pounds, and the
bailiff left.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIII.

BUT his presence did not die out of the kitchen; they always seemed to
feel as if he had been there. The hearth had been stained by a foreign
foot, the very poker had been touched by a foreign hand, the rude form
at the side by the wall had been occupied by an intruder. Amaryllis had
always been so fond of the kitchen--the oldest part of the house, two
centuries at least. The wide hearth and immense chimney, up which, when
the fire was out, of a winter's night you could see the stars; over
which of a windy night you could imagine the witches riding by, borne on
the deep howling of the blast; the great beam and the gun slung to it;
the heavy oaken table, unpolished, greyish oak; the window in the thick
wall, set with yellowish glass; the stone floor, and the walls from
which the whitewash pee