ate, were not wanting. Besides these there were books from a
London circulating library, paper-covered light literature in French and
choice Italian, and the latest monthly reviews; while between the two
windows stood the telegraph apparatus whose wire had been the means of
bringing him hither.

These things, ensconced amid so much of the old and hoary, were as if
a stray hour from the nineteenth century had wandered like a butterfly
into the thirteenth, and lost itself there.

The door between this ante-chamber and the sleeping-room stood open.
Without venturing to cross the threshold, for he felt that he would be
abusing hospitality to go so far, Somerset looked in for a moment. It
was a pretty place, and seemed to have been hastily fitted up. In a
corner, overhung by a blue and white canopy of silk, was a little cot,
hardly large enough to impress the character of bedroom upon the old
place. Upon a counterpane lay a parasol and a silk neckerchief. On the
other side of the room was a tall mirror of startling newness, draped
like the bedstead, in blue and white. Thrown at random upon the floor
was a pair of satin slippers that would have fitted Cinderella. A
dressing-gown lay across a settee; and opposite, upon a small easy-chair
in the same blue and white livery, were a Bible, the Baptist Magazine,
Wardlaw on Infant Baptism, Walford's County Families, and the Court
Journal. On and over the mantelpiece were nicknacks of various
descriptions, and photographic portraits of the artistic, scientific,
and literary celebrities of the day.

A dressing-room lay beyond; but, becoming conscious that his study
of ancient architecture would hardly bear stretching further in that
direction, Mr. Somerset retreated to the outside, obliviously passing by
the gem of Renaissance that had led him in.

'She affects blue,' he was thinking. 'Then she is fair.'

On looking up, some time later, at the new clock that told the seconds,
he found that the hours at his disposal for work had flown without his
having transferred a single feature of the building or furniture to his
sketch-book. Before leaving he sent in for permission to come again, and
then walked across the fields to the inn at Sleeping-Green, reflecting
less upon Miss De Stancy (so little force of presence had she possessed)
than upon the modern flower in a mediaeval flower-pot whom Miss De
Stancy's information had brought before him, and upon the incongruities
that were dail