wonderful."

"She likes it," said Ughtred, and then rather slunk a step behind his
mother, as if he were ashamed of himself.

"The house is just beyond those trees," said Lady Anstruthers.

They came in full view of it three minutes later. When she saw it, Betty
uttered an exclamation and stopped again to enjoy effects.

"She likes that, too," said Ughtred, and, although he said it
sheepishly, there was imperfectly concealed beneath the awkwardness a
pleasure in the fact.

"Do you?" asked Rosalie, with her small, painful smile.

Betty laughed.

"It is too picturesque, in its special way, to be quite credible," she
said.

"I thought that when I first saw it," said Rosy.

"Don't you think so, now?"

"Well," was the rather uncertain reply, "as Nigel says, there's not much
good in a place that is falling to pieces."

"Why let it fall to pieces?" Betty put it to her with impartial
promptness.

"We haven't money enough to hold it together," resignedly.

As they climbed the low, broad, lichen-blotched steps, whose broken
stone balustrades were almost hidden in clutching, untrimmed ivy, Betty
felt them to be almost incredible, too. The uneven stones of the terrace
the steps mounted to were lichen-blotched and broken also. Tufts of
green growths had forced themselves between the flags, and added an
untidy beauty. The ivy tossed in branches over the red roof and walls of
the house. It had been left unclipped, until it was rather an endlessly
clambering tree than a creeper. The hall they entered had the beauty
of spacious form and good, old oaken panelling. There were deep window
seats and an ancient high-backed settle or so, and a massive table by
the fireless hearth. But there were no pictures in places where pictures
had evidently once hung, and the only coverings on the stone floor were
the faded remnants of a central rug and a worn tiger skin, the head
almost bald and a glass eye knocked out.

Bettina took in the unpromising details without a quiver of the
extravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them,
seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's gallery
and staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with the
look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak.
She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing
Rosy, or of being herself obviously disturbed. She had come to
observe situations and rearrange them with