ig drawing-room, which
was the feature of the 'new part'--the third house of the series which
now made one. The new part was incongruously solid and modern, with a
storey (comprising the drawing-room and its staircase only) which
overtopped the adjacent roofs. Below it was a corresponding
dining-room, and both apartments were furnished richly in the fashion
of the time--tons of solid mahogany in the latter, and a pasture of
grass-green carpet and brocade upholsterings in the former, lit up with
gilded wall-paper and curtain-cornices as by rays of a pale sun. Curly
rosewood sofas and arm-chairs, and marbled and mirrored chiffonniers,
and the like, were in such profusion upstairs as to do away with the
air of bleakness common to a right-angled chamber of large size and
middle-class arrangement. A fine grand piano stood open in a prominent
place. Four large shaded lamps and four piano candles pleasantly
irradiated the whole; while three French windows, opening on a balcony,
still stood wide to the summer night.

By the great white marble mantelpiece, under the great gilt-framed
pier-glass, filling the huge chair specially dedicated to his use,
Father Pennycuick sat in comfortable gossip with his old friend,
Thornycroft of Bundaboo. It irked him to separate himself from pipe and
newspaper, baggy coat and slouchy slippers, and his corpulent frame
objected to stairs; but when he had guests he considered it his duty to
toil up after them, in patent shoes and dining costume, and sit amongst
them until music or card games were on the way, when he would retire as
unobtrusively as his size and heavy footstep permitted. It was the
custom to pretend not to see or hear him go, and it would have annoyed
him exceedingly had anyone bidden him good-night.

The pair talked shop, after the manner of old squatters when they sit
apart; but the tall, spare, grey man with the thoughtful face--more
like a soldier than a sheep-farmer--was not thinking much of his flocks
and herds. His thoughts followed the direction of his quiet eyes,
focussed upon an amber silk gown and its immediate surroundings. Mr
Thornycroft was Deborah's godfather, and at forty-seven was to all the
sisters quite an elderly man, a sort of bachelor uncle to the family,
one with no concern in such youthful pastimes as love-making and
marrying, except as a benevolent onlooker and present-giver; and so the
veiled vigilance of his regard was not noticed, as it would not have
b