genial. It fell upon the vague
squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made
a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick
and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to
one picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs.
She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with
that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there;
she lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the
middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures
than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering
glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art.
She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when
people had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers
they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark
even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light
grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an
enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the
gallery and down the other, and then she said: "Well, now I know more
than I did when I began!"

"You apparently have a great passion for knowledge," her cousin
returned.

"I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant."

"You strike me as different from most girls."

"Ah, some of them would--but the way they're talked to!" murmured
Isabel, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a
moment, to change the subject, "Please tell me--isn't there a ghost?"
she went on.

"A ghost?"

"A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in
America."

"So we do here, when we see them."

"You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house."

"It's not a romantic old house," said Ralph. "You'll be disappointed if
you count on that. It's a dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here
but what you may have brought with you."

"I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the
right place."

"To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here,
between my father and me."

Isabel looked at him a moment. "Is there never any one here but your
father and you?"

"My mother, of course."

"Oh, I know your mother; she's not romantic. Haven't you other people?"

"Very few."

"I'm sorry for that; I like so muc