yard came the crowing of a cock, followed by the liquid chuckle
of a pigeon perched somewhere overhead among the twisted chimneys.
And within this room all was equally at peace. The sunshine lay on
table and polished floor, barred by the mullions of the windows, and
stained here and there by the little Flemish emblems and coats that
hung across the glass; while those two figures, so perfectly in place
in their serenity and leisure, sat before the open fire-place and
contemplated the very unpeaceful element that had just walked upstairs
incarnate in a pale, drawn-eyed young man in black.

The house, in fact, was one of those that have a personality as marked
and as mysterious as of a human character. It affected people in quite
an extraordinary way. It took charge of the casual guest, entertained
and soothed and sometimes silenced him; and it cast upon all who lived
in it an enchantment at once inexplicable and delightful. Externally
it was nothing remarkable.

It was a large, square-built house, close indeed to the road, but
separated from it by a high wrought-iron gate in an oak paling, and a
short, straight garden-path; originally even ante-Tudor, but matured
through centuries, with a Queen Anne front of mellow red brick, and
back premises of tile, oak, and modern rough-cast, with old
brew-houses that almost enclosed a graveled court behind. Behind this
again lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all
into a dozen rectangles, separated from the orchard and yew walk by a
broad double hedge down the center of which ran a sheltered path.
Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip westwards lay
broad lawns surrounded by high trees completely shading it from all
view of the houses that formed the tiny hamlet fifty yards away.

Within, the house had been modernized almost to a commonplace level. A
little hall gave entrance to the drawing-room on the right where these
two women now sat, a large, stately room, paneled from floor to
ceiling, and to the dining-room on the left; and, again, through to
the back, where a smoking room, an inner hall, and the big kitchens
and back premises concluded the ground floor. The two more stories
above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large rooms, airy,
high, and dignified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched
chambers, whitewashed, oak-floored, and dormer-windowed, where one or
two of the servants slept in splendid isolation. A little fligh