he view of gathering some ideas as to the
distribution of rooms therein before the demolition of a portion of the
structure, he decided off-hand that Paula's dinner was not of sufficient
importance to him as a professional man and student of art to justify
a waste of the evening by going. He accordingly declined Mrs. Goodman's
and Miss Power's invitation; and at five o'clock left the castle and
walked across the fields to the little town.

He dined early, and, clearing away heaviness with a cup of coffee,
applied himself to that volume of the county history which contained the
record of Stancy Castle.

Here he read that 'when this picturesque and ancient structure was
founded, or by whom, is extremely uncertain. But that a castle stood on
the site in very early times appears from many old books of charters. In
its prime it was such a masterpiece of fortification as to be the wonder
of the world, and it was thought, before the invention of gunpowder,
that it never could be taken by any force less than divine.'

He read on to the times when it first passed into the hands of 'De
Stancy, Chivaler,' and received the family name, and so on from De
Stancy to De Stancy till he was lost in the reflection whether Paula
would or would not have thought more highly of him if he had accepted
the invitation to dinner. Applying himself again to the tome, he learned
that in the year 1504 Stephen the carpenter was 'paid eleven pence for
necessarye repayrs,' and William the mastermason eight shillings 'for
whyt lyming of the kitchen, and the lyme to do it with,' including 'a
new rope for the fyer bell;' also the sundry charges for 'vij crockes,
xiij lytyll pans, a pare of pot hookes, a fyer pane, a lanterne, a
chafynge dyshe, and xij candyll stychs.'

Bang went eight strokes of the clock: it was the dinner-hour.

'There, now I can't go, anyhow!' he said bitterly, jumping up, and
picturing her receiving her company. How would she look; what would she
wear? Profoundly indifferent to the early history of the noble
fabric, he felt a violent reaction towards modernism, eclecticism, new
aristocracies, everything, in short, that Paula represented. He even
gave himself up to consider the Greek court that she had wished for, and
passed the remainder of the evening in making a perspective view of the
same.

The next morning he awoke early, and, resolving to be at work betimes,
started promptly. It was a fine calm hour of day; the grass slopes