By this time we had reached the little room in which I was received the first time I visited the Hall. There we found Judy.
“If you are not too tired already, I should like to show you my little study. It has, I think, a better view than any other room in the house,” said Miss Oldcastle.
“I shall be delighted,” I replied.
“Come, Judy,” said her aunt.
“You don’t want me, I am sure, auntie.”
“I do, Judy, really. You mustn’t be cross to us because uncle has been cross to you. Uncle is not well, you know, and isn’t a bit like himself; and you know you should not have meddled with his machinery.”
And Miss Oldcastle put her arm round Judy, and kissed her. Whereupon Judy jumped from her seat, threw her book down, and ran to one of the several doors that opened from the room. This disclosed a little staircase, almost like a ladder, only that it wound about, up which we climbed, and reached a charming little room, whose window looked down upon the Bishop’s Basin, glimmering slaty through the tops of the trees between. It was panelled in small panels of dark oak, like the room below, but with more of carving. Consequently it was sombre, and its sombreness was unrelieved by any mirror. I gazed about me with a kind of awe. I would gladly have carried away the remembrance of everything and its shadow.—Just opposite the window was a small space of brightness formed by the backs of nicely-bound books. Seeing that these attracted my eye—
“Those are almost all gifts from my uncle,” said Miss Oldcastle. “He is really very kind, and you will not think of him as you have seen him to-day ?”
“Indeed I will not,” I replied.
My eye fell upon a small pianoforte.