"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."
She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.
"Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"
She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.
"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that the ivy is giving your face."
"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."
They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while. All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.
"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is just the room for us."
"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully.
"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon," he answered.