over the tops of the shields against which they stood on end, upon which
all the family arms and quarterings of the Kynastons had become softly
coated over by an indistinct veil of gray-green moss.

Vera turned in at this gate, nodding to the woman at the lodge within,
who looked out for a minute at her as she passed. It was her daily walk,
for Kynaston was uninhabited and empty, and any one was free to wander
unreproved among its chestnut glades, or to stand and gossip to its
ancient housekeeper in the great bare rooms of the deserted house.

Vera did so often. The square, red-brick building, with its stone
copings, the terrace walk before the windows, the peacocks sunning
themselves before the front door, the fountain plashing sleepily in the
stone basin, the statues down the square Italian garden--all had a
certain fascination for her dreamy poetical nature. Then turning in at
the high narrow doorway, whose threshold Mrs. Eccles, the housekeeper,
had long ago given her free leave to cross, she would stroll through the
deserted rooms, touching the queer spindle-legged furniture with gentle
reverent fingers, gazing absorbedly at the dark rows of family portraits,
and speculating always to herself what they had been like, these dead and
gone Kynastons, who had once lived and laughed, and sorrowed and died, in
the now empty rooms, where nothing was left of them save those dim and
faded portraits, and where the echo of her own footsteps was the only
sound in the wilderness of the carpetless chambers where once they had
reigned supreme.

She got to know them all at last by name--whole generations of them.
There was Sir Ralph in armour, and Bridget, his wife, in a ruff and a
farthingale; young Sir Maurice, who died in boyhood, and Sir Penrhyn, his
brother, in long love-locks and lace ruffles. A whole succession of Sir
Martins and Sir Henrys; then came the first Sir John and his wife in
powder and patches, with their fourteen children all in a row, whose
elaborate marriages and family histories, Vera, although assisted by Mrs.
Eccles, who had them all at her fingers' ends, had considerable
difficulty in clearly comprehending. It was a relief to be firmly landed
with Sir Maurice, in a sad-coloured suit and full-bottomed wig, "the
present baronet's grandfather," and, lastly, Sir John, "the present
baronet's father," in a deputy-lieutenant's scarlet uniform, with a
cocked hat under his arm--by far the worst and most inartisti