Luckily for her, however, the lamps had not been lighted in the hall, and the sudden flush that came over her face was unobserved by her friends.
She gave a laugh.
“What a good shot I made!” she cried. “Isn’t this just the sort of house to have an old-panelled dining-room and a tapestry chamber beside it? I think we should have tea here. What sort of prehistoric creature is that on the wall?”
“I believe it is a skull that was found when they were digging the foundations of one of the lodges,” said Mrs Tremaine.
“I seem to have read some description of this very place,” said Charlie, standing in front of the great skull.
Madge wondered if he would remember enough of her account of the house of her dreams to enable him to recognise the details before him.
“It is fully described in Hall’s History, and in every guide-book of the district. The animal that that skull belonged to lived some thousands of years before the Flood, I understand.”
“What is the exact date b.c. carved on it?” laughed Charlie. “Yes, I daresay I came upon a paragraph or an illustration of the place. No house is safe from the depredations of the magazines nowadays.”
Tea was served in the hall to give Madge’s maid time to unpack; and then the girl was shown to her room. She ran up the broad, shallow staircase to the lobby; she had made up her mind to sit, if only for a moment, on the carved settee; but a surprise awaited her,—no carved settee was there. The painted window was there, but no settee was beneath it.
She was so surprised that she stood for some moments gazing at the vacant place.