interest in his own thoughts to do away with the necessity of acquiring
fresh impressions from other people's replies; for often after putting a
question he looked on the floor, as if the subject were at an end. Lunch
was now ready, and when they were in the dining-room Miss De Stancy,
to introduce a topic of more general interest, asked Somerset if he had
noticed the myrtle on the lawn?

Somerset had noticed it, and thought he had never seen such a full-blown
one in the open air before. His eyes were, however, resting at the
moment on the only objects at all out of the common that the dining-room
contained. One was a singular glass case over the fireplace, within
which were some large mediaeval door-keys, black with rust and age; and
the others were two full-length oil portraits in the costume of the end
of the last century--so out of all proportion to the size of the room
they occupied that they almost reached to the floor.

'Those originally belonged to the castle yonder,' said Miss De Stancy,
or Charlotte, as her father called her, noticing Somerset's glance at
the keys. 'They used to unlock the principal entrance-doors, which were
knocked to pieces in the civil wars. New doors were placed afterwards,
but the old keys were never given up, and have been preserved by us ever
since.'

'They are quite useless--mere lumber--particularly to me,' said Sir
William.

'And those huge paintings were a present from Paula,' she continued.
'They are portraits of my great-grandfather and mother. Paula would give
all the old family pictures back to me if we had room for them; but they
would fill the house to the ceilings.'

Sir William was impatient of the subject. 'What is the utility of
such accumulations?' he asked. 'Their originals are but clay now--mere
forgotten dust, not worthy a moment's inquiry or reflection at this
distance of time. Nothing can retain the spirit, and why should we
preserve the shadow of the form?--London has been very full this year,
sir, I have been told?'

'It has,' said Somerset, and he asked if they had been up that season.
It was plain that the matter with which Sir William De Stancy least
cared to occupy himself before visitors was the history of his own
family, in which he was followed with more simplicity by his daughter
Charlotte.

'No,' said the baronet. 'One might be led to think there is a fatality
which prevents it. We make arrangements to go to town almost every year,
to meet some