"Do you remember the blue drawing-room, Lenny, in your father's house at Long Beckley? I think this room is quite as large, if not larger."
"What are the walls like?" asked Leonard, placing his hand on the wall behind him while he spoke. "They are covered with paper, are they not?"
"Yes; with faded red paper, except on one side, where strips have been torn off and thrown on the floor. There is wainscoting round the walls. It is cracked in many places, and has ragged holes in it, which seem to have been made by the rats and mice."
"Are there any pictures on the walls?"
"No. There is an empty frame over the fire-place. And opposite—I mean just above where I am standing now—there is a small mirror, cracked in the centre, with broken branches for candlesticks projecting on either side of it. Above that, again, there is a stag's head and antlers; some of the face has dropped away, and a perfect maze of cobwebs is stretched between the horns. On the other walls there are large nails, with more cobwebs hanging down from them heavy with dirt—but no pictures any where. Now you know every thing about the walls. What is the next thing? The floor?"
"I think, Rosamond, my feet have told me already what the floor is like?"
"They may have told you that it is bare, dear; but I can tell you more than that. It slopes down from every side toward the middle of the room. It is covered thick with dust, which is swept about—I suppose by the wind blowing through the broken panes—into strange, wavy, feathery shapes that quite hide the floor beneath. Lenny! suppose these boards should be made to take up any where! If we discover nothing to-day, we will have them swept to-morrow. In the mean time, I must go on telling you about the room, must I not? You know already what the size of it is, what the window is like, what the walls are like, what the floor is like. Is there any thing else before we come to the furniture? Oh, yes! the ceiling—for that completes the shell of the room. I can't see much of it, it is so high. There are great cracks and stains from one end to the other, and the plaster has come away in patches in some places. The centre ornament seems to be made of alternate rows of small plaster cabbages and large plaster lozenges. Two bits of chain hang down from the middle, which, I suppose, once held a chandelier. The cornice is so dingy that I can hardly tell what pattern it represents. It is very broad and heavy, and it looks in some places as if it had once been colored, and that is all I can say about it. Do you feel as if you thoroughly understood the whole room now, Lenny?"
"Thoroughly, my love; I have the same clear picture of it in my mind which you always give me of every thing you see. You need waste no more time on me. We may now devote ourselves to the purpose for which we came here."
At those last words, the smile which had been dawning on Rosamond's face when her husband addressed her, vanished from it in a moment. She stole close to his side, and, bending down over him, with her arm on his shoulder, said, in low, whispering tones—
"When we had the other room opened, opposite the landing, we began by examining the furniture. We thought—if you remember—that the mystery of the Myrtle Room might be connected with hidden valuables that had been stolen, or hidden papers that ought to have been destroyed, or hidden stains and traces of some crime, which even a chair or a table might betray. Shall we examine the furniture here?"