bedroom.
"Oh, what a dream of a paper! 'Who Won the Boat-race, or The Battle of
the Blues.' Fancy waking up here after a heavy night. I suppose the
designer was found 'guilty, but insane.' Another two cupboards?
Thanks. That's fifty-nine. And yet another? Oh, no. The backstairs,
of course. As before, approached by a door which slides to and fro
with a gentle rumbling noise, instead of swinging. The same warranted
to jam if opened hastily. Can't you hear Falcon on the wrong side with
a butler's tray full of glass, wondering why he was born? Oh, and the
bijou spiral leads to the box-room, does it? I see. Adele's American
trunks, especially the five-foot cube, will go up there beautifully.
Falcon will like this house, won't he?"

"I wish to goodness you'd be quiet," said Daphne. "I want to think."

"It's not me," said her husband. "It's that Inter-University
wall-paper. And now where's the tower? I suppose that's approached by
a wire rope with knots in it?"

"What tower?" said Adele.

"_The_ tower. The feature of the house. Or was it a ballroom?"

"Ah," I cried, "the ballroom! I'd quite forgotten." I turned to the
agent. "Didn't you say there was a ballroom?"

"But yes, _Monsieur_. On the ground-floor. I will show it to you at
once."

We followed him downstairs in single file, and so across the hall to
where two tall oak doors were suggesting a picture-gallery. For a
moment the fellow fumbled at their lock. Then he pushed the two open.

I did not know that, outside a palace, there was such a chamber in all
France. Of superb proportions, the room was panelled from floor to
ceiling with oak--richly carved oak--and every handsome panel was
outlined with gold. The ceiling was all of oak, fretted with gold.
The floor was of polished oak, inlaid with ebony. At the end of the
room three lovely pillars upheld a minstrels' gallery, while opposite a
stately oriel yawned a tremendous fireplace, with two stone seraphim
for jambs.

In answer to our bewildered inquiries, the agent explained excitedly
that the villa had been built upon the remains of a much older house,
and that, while the other portions of the original mansion had
disappeared, this great chamber and the basement were still surviving.
But that was all. Beyond that it was once a residence of note, he
could tell us nothing.

Rather naturally, we devoted more time to the ballroom than to all the
rest of the house. Against our sa