ers, and the place had altogether a deserted
look.

'The Priory has not been occupied for several years,' Mr. Darrell
said, as if in answer to my thoughts as I looked up at the closed
windows. 'The family have been too poor to live in it in anything
like their old state. There is only one member of the old family
remaining now, and he leads a wandering kind of life abroad, I
believe.'

'What has made them so poor?' asked Mrs. Darrell.

'Extravagant habits, I suppose,' answered her husband, with an
expressive shrug of the shoulders. 'The Egertons have always been a
wild race.'

'Egerton!' Mrs. Darrell repeated; 'I thought the name of these
people was Cumber.'

'No; Cumber is only the name of the place. It has been in the
Egerton family for centuries.'

'Indeed!'

I was seated exactly opposite her, and I was surprised by the
strange startled look in her face as she repeated the name of
Egerton. That look passed away in the next moment, and left her with
her usual air of languid indifference; a placid kind of listlessness
which harmonised very well with her pale complexion and delicate
features. She was not a woman from whom one expected much animation.

The low iron-studded door of the Priory was opened by a decent-
looking old woman of that species which seems created expressly for
the showing of old houses. She divined our errand at once, and as
soon as we were in the hall, began her catalogue of pictures and
curiosities in the usual mechanical way, while we looked about us,
always fixing our eyes on the wrong object, and more bewildered than
enlightened by her description of the chief features of the place.

We went from room to room, the dame throwing open the shutters of
the deep-set gothic windows, and letting in a flood of sunshine upon
the faded tapestries and tarnished picture-frames. It was a noble
old place, and the look of decay upon everything was more in accord
with its grandeur than any modern splendour could have been.

We had been through all the rooms on the ground floor, most of which
opened into one another, and were returning towards the hall, when
Mr. Darrell missed his wife, and sent me back to look for her in one
direction, while he went in another. I hurried through three or four
empty rooms, until I came to a small one at the end of the house,
and here I found her. I had not noticed this room much, for it was
furnished in a more modern style than the rest of the house, and the
old