Upstairs he took Vance over the funny bedrooms, so big and high-ceilinged, with beds of mahogany or rosewood, and the lace-looped toilet tables (like the ladies' ball-dresses) with gilt mirror frames peeping through the festoons, and big marble-topped washstands that carried carafes and goblets of cut glass, porcelain basins and ewers with flower garlands. In one of the dressing rooms (Miss Lorburn's) there was a specially ornate toilet set, with a ewer in the shape of a swan with curving throat and flattened wings, and a basin like a nest of rushes. "Poor Elinor—I supposed she dreamed of a Lohengrin before the letter, and hoped to find a baby in the bulrushes," Lorry commented; and Vance, understanding the allusions, felt a pang of sympathy for the lonely woman. At the end of the passage, in one of the freakish towers, was a circular room with blue brocade curtains and tufted furniture, the walls hung with large coloured lithographs of peasant girls dancing to tambourines, and young fellows in breeches and velvet jackets who drove oxcarts laden with ripe grapes. "The Italy of her day," Lorry smiled. "She must have done this boudoir in the Lohengrin stage. And she ended in spectacles, cold and immaculate, reading Coleridge all alone. Brr!" He broke off, and turned to the window. "Hullo! Isn't that Halo?"

The hoarse bark of the Eaglewood motor sounded at the gate. "Come along down," Lorry continued. "You'd better take advantage of the lift home. Besides, it's too dark to do much more here."

They started down the stairs, but in the hall Vance hesitated. "I've left the books piled up anyhow. Guess I'd better go back and put them on the shelves." He realized suddenly that for the last two days he had done neither dusting nor sorting, and wondered what Miss Spear would say if she saw the havoc he had created.

"Not on your life!" Lorry enjoined him. "You could hardly see a yard before your nose in the library by this time, and lighting up is strictly forbidden. Might set the old place on fire. If it was mine I'd do it, and collect the insurance; but old Tom don't need to, curse him." He stopped short, and clapped his hand on his waistcoat pocket. "I must have left my cigarette case in there. Yes, I remember. You wait here—"