He remembered the drawing-room at Perley Hatch, which the Ferrises had recently repainted and papered. No! That was not his idea. He felt that Virginia would never like big bunches of floral decoration all over her walls.
Then he remembered the little room in which Mrs. Mynors had received him at Wayhurst. Tiny as it was, how its charm, its dainty elegance had impressed him! He closed his eyes and recalled its aspect. Ivory paint—yes, that was all right; and walls of a warm, sunny golden brown. How would that suit her? Acting on impulse he rang the bell, and said he wanted to speak to Mrs. Wells.
The housekeeper, when consulted, was delighted with the idea. It had apparently presented itself to the mind of the servants' hall long ago. She would send down a boy at once, to telephone from Manton into Derby for a man to come over the following morning to take the order.
"The furnishing I must leave until Mrs. Gaunt returns," said Gaunt, in a depressed way. "I can see that this stuff is all wrong, but I can't see what she would put in its place."
"Oh, as to that, sir. If it's a question of what Mrs. Gaunt would like—why, I can tell you that myself, and you won't have far to seek, for we've got it all in the house at this moment," was Mrs. Wells's surprising answer.
"Got it in the house?"
"In the lumber-room, sir. Your great-aunts, the Miss Gaunts, turned all the old things into the lumber-room, after their father died, about fifty years ago, and refurnished great part of the house, so I'm told. There's a great many things up there, and Mrs. Gaunt, when she saw them, she went into raptures over them. Said they was as old as Adam, which I could hardly believe——" She broke off abruptly, for Gaunt, her morose master, had laughed aloud, and the circumstance was startling.
"Adam's period," he hastened to apologise. "Yes, go on, please. If you showed the lumber-room to Mrs. Gaunt, why have you never mentioned it to me?"
The good woman's eyes grew very round. "Why, sir, you was here when I came," said she. "I concluded you knew all about it. My part was only to see as the things didn't perish, for I have a kind of liking myself for all them antiquities."
Gaunt's eyes were still dancing over the Adam joke; and his wandering gaze had strayed to the mantel, and realised that this was of the same period. Doubtless what made these walnut carved whatnots and arm-chairs look so wrong was their silent clash with the fine simplicity of the dental moulding. As his eye wandered over the faded pink wallpaper, with its brown, green and blue roses, he suddenly perceived, like a man whose eyes are newly opened, that the room was moulded for panels. It struck him that this was the treatment required.