“Do show me the house, Ronald—the drawing-room, and—and—there is another room I wish to see.”
“You shall see them all, dear,” I said. “You are excited. It is natural enough. This is the drawing-room.”
She glanced round it hastily.
“And now the others!” she exclaimed.
I took her to the dining-room, the library, and the various apartments on the ground-floor.
She scarcely looked at them. When we had finished exploring, “Are these all?” she asked, with a wavering accent of disappointment.
“All,” I answered.
“Then—show me the rooms upstairs.”
We ascended the shallow oak steps, and passed first into the apartment in which my grandmother had died.
It had been done up since then, refurnished, and almost completely altered. Only the wide fireplace, with its brass dogs and its heavy oaken mantelpiece, had been left untouched.