"Truly, I know not," the youthful visitor answered. "I set forth to go
down the stairs, and missed the right turning, as I guess. But pray
you, Rebecca, ere you set me in the way, tell me of whom are these two
pictures?"

"Why," said she, "can you not guess? The one is of your own
grandfather, Sir Aubrey Louvaine."

"Oh, then it is Grandfather when he was young. But who is this,
Rebecca? It looks like an angel, but angels are never sick, and she
seems to be lying sick."

"There be angels not yet in Heaven, Mistress Lettice," softly answered
the old servant. "And if you were to live to the age of Methuselah,
you'd never see a portrait of one nearer the angels than this. 'Tis a
picture that old Squire--Mistress Joyce's father--would have taken, nigh
sixty years since, of our angel, our Mistress Anstace, when she was none
so many weeks off the golden gate. They set forth with her in a litter
for London town, and what came back was her coffin, and that picture."

"Was she like that?" asked Lettice, scarcely above her breath, for she
felt as if she could not speak aloud, any more than in church.

"She was, and she was not," said old Rebecca. "Them that knew her might
be minded of her. She was like nothing in this world. But, my dear
heart, I hear Mrs Edith calling for you. Here be the stairs, and the
Credence Chamber, where supper is laid, is the first door on your left
after you reach the foot."

On the Saturday evening, as they sat round the fire in the Credence
Chamber, Edith asked Aunt Joyce if old Dr Cox were still parson of
Minster Lovel.

"Nay," said she; "I would he were. We have a new lord and new laws, the
which do commonly go together."

"What manner of lord?" inquired Edith.

"And what make of laws?" said Temperance.

"Bad, the pair of them," said the old lady.

"Why, is he a gamester or drunkard?" asked Lady Louvaine.

"Or a dumb dog that cannot bark?" suggested Temperance.

"Well, I'd fain have him a bit dumber," was Aunt Joyce's answer. "At
least, I wish he'd dance a bit less."

"Dance!" cried Edith.

"Well!" said Aunt Joyce, "what else can you call it, when a man measures
his steps, goes two steps up and bows, then two steps down and bows,
then up again one step, with a great courtesy, and holds up his hands as
if he were astonished--when there's nothing in the world to astonish him
except his own foolish antics?"

"But where doth he this?" said Lady Louvaine: "here in the ch