"I have been quite happy with Miss Scrope; you need not look so penitent," says Clarissa. "And who am I, that I should compete with a steward? We have been having quite a good time, and an excellent argument. Come here, and tell your sister that you think Jim the prettiest name in the world."
"Did any one throw a doubt on the subject? Lives there a soul so dead to euphony as not to recognize the music in those three letters?—Jim! Why, it is poetry itself," says Sir James, who is not so absent that he cannot scent battle on the breeze. As he speaks, he smiles: and when James Scrope smiles he is almost handsome.
"Some day you will regret encouraging that child in her folly," remarks Miss Scrope, severely. At which the child makes a saucy little grimace unseen, and rises to her feet.
"What a solemn warning!" says Scrope, with a shrug. "I hope," turning to Clarissa, "you have taken it to heart, and that it will keep you out of imaginary mischief. It ought, you know. It would be a shabby thing to bring down public censure on the head of one who has so nobly espoused your cause."
"My conduct from this day forth shall be above suspicion," says Clarissa. "Good-by, Miss Scrope," stooping to press her fresh warm lips to the withered cross old cheek beneath her: "I am going to tread old ground with—James."
She follows him across hall and corridor, through two modern rooms, and past a portière, into another and larger hall beyond. Here, standing before a heavy oaken doer, he turns the handle of it, and, as it swings back slowly and sleepily, they pass into another room, so unexpectedly and so strangely different from any they have yet entered, as almost to make one start.
It is a huge old-fashioned apartment, stone-floored and oak panelled, that once, in olden days, must have been a refectory. Chairs carved in oak, and built like bishops' thrones, line the walls, looking as though no man for many a hundred years has drawn them from their present position. Massive cabinets and cupboards, cunningly devised by crafty hands in by-gone days, look out from dusky corners, the hideous faces carved upon them wreathed in their eternal ghastly smiles. From narrow, painted windows great gleams of sunset from the gay world without pour in, only to look sadly out of place in the solemn gloomy room. But one small door divides it from the halls outside; yet centuries seem to roll between it and them.
In one corner a door lies half open, and behind it a narrow flight of stairs runs upward to a turret chamber above,—a tiny stairway, heavily balustraded and uncarpeted, that creates in one a mad desire to ascend and learn the secrets that may lie at its top.
Miss Peyton, scarce noticing the monkish refectory, runs to the stairs and mounts them eagerly, Sir James following her in a more leisurely fashion.
"Now for my own room," she says, with some degree of quickness in her tone. She reaches the turret chamber as she speaks, and looks around her. It is quite a circle, and apparently of the same date as the one they have just quitted. Even the furniture, though of lighter make and size, is of a similar age and pattern. Ugly little chairs and unpleasantly solid tables are dotted here and there, a perfect wealth of Old-World work cut into them. Everything is carved, and to an unsympathetic observer it might occur that the carver must have been a person subject to fiendish visions and unholy nightmares. But no doubt the beauty of his designs lies in their ugliness, and his heads are a marvel of art, and his winged creatures priceless!