y, Elsmere with
a smile took his guest silently back into the hall, and opened a carved
door behind a curtain. Passing through, they found themselves in a long
passage lighted by small windows on the left-hand side.

'This passage, please notice,' said Robert, 'leads to nothing but the
wing containing the library, or rather libraries, which is the oldest
part of the house. I always enter it with a kind of pleasing awe!
Consider these carpets, which keep out every sound, and look how
everything gets older as we go on.'

For half-way down the passage the ceiling seemed to descend upon their
heads, the flooring became uneven and woodwork and walls showed that
they had passed from the Jacobean house into the much older Tudor
building. Presently Robert led the way up a few shallow steps, pushed
open a heavy door, also covered by curtains, and bade his companion
enter.

They found themselves in a low immense room, running at right angles to
the passage they had just quitted. The long diamond-paned window,
filling almost half of the opposite wall, faced the door by which they
had come in; the heavy carved mantelpiece was to their right; an open
doorway on their left, closed at present by tapestry hangings, seemed to
lead into yet other rooms.

The walls of this one were completely covered from floor to ceiling with
latticed bookcases, enclosed throughout in a frame of oak carved in
light classical relief by what appeared to be a French hand of the
sixteenth century. The chequered bindings of the books, in which the
creamy tints of vellum predominated, lined the whole surface of the wall
with a delicate sobriety of colour; over the mantelpiece, the picture of
the founder of the house--a Holbein portrait, glorious in red robes and
fur and golden necklace--seemed to gather up and give voice to all the
dignity and impressiveness of the room beneath him; while on the window
side the book-lined wall was, as it were, replaced by the wooded face of
a hill, clothed in dark lines of trimmed yews, which rose abruptly about
a hundred yards from the house and overshadowed the whole library wing.
Between the window and the hill, however, was a small old English
garden, closely hedged round with yew hedges, and blazing now with every
flower that an English August knows--with sun-flowers, tiger-lilies, and
dahlias white and red. The window was low, so that the flowers seemed to
be actually in the room, challenging the pale tints of the bo