“He! he marry again! Oh, sir, you are mistaken! He was more likely to die than to marry! Whoever told you so, sir—begging your pardon—told a most haynious falsehood!”
“I really hope he never did marry again.”
“He never did, sir, and he never will. He is true to her memory, and he lives only for their son, who is at Eton. Now, sir, shall I show you the library and the drawing rooms?”
Mr. Force bowed, and with his party followed the housekeeper from the picture gallery to the hall and through that to the drawing rooms, into which they only looked, for the apartment was fitted up in modern style and all the furniture shrouded in brown holland.
The library was more interesting, and contained many rare black-letter tomes, into which Abel Force would have liked to look, had time allowed.
The sun was setting and it was growing dusk in this grand and gloomy mansion.
“We must go now, I think, my dear,” said Mr. Force, in a low voice, to his daughter.
Wynnette drew him quite away from the group into the light of the great oriel window of the library and whispered:
“Not a crown, nor a half sov., but a guinea, papa! a whole guinea for all those thundering bouncers—I mean those romances she has told us about the jolly old smoke-dried window shades and fire screens hung up in frames for pictures of the ancestors, and called Kenneths and Ethuses and things! Why, papa, those couldn’t have been portraits! There were no painters in Britain at the time those are said to have lived. And then about the Leonardo da Vinci picture! If he ever painted that it would be in one of the great art galleries of the world! Not in a private collection! Give her a guinea, papa! She can’t afford to lie so much for less!”
“My dear, the woman only repeats what she has heard,” said Mr. Force.