tairways, with
stained or faded walls, and sometimes with cracked or fallen plastering
and wainscotting. Here and there the oak flooring itself was uncertain.
The rooms, whether large or small, all presented a like aspect of
potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn. There
were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of
them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time
it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away
into such bareness.

"There was a time, I suppose, when it was all furnished," she said.

"All these rooms were shut up when I came here," Rosy answered. "I
suppose things worth selling have been sold. When pieces of furniture
were broken in one part of the house, they were replaced by things
brought from another. No one cared. Nigel hates it all. He calls it a
rathole. He detests the country everywhere, but particularly this part
of it. After the first year I had learned better than to speak to him of
spending money on repairs."

"A good deal of money should be spent on repairs," reflected Betty,
looking about her.

She was standing in the middle of a room whose walls were hung with
the remains of what had been chintz, covered with a pattern of loose
clusters of moss rosebuds. The dampness had rotted it until, in some
places, it had fallen away in strips from its fastenings. A quaint,
embroidered couch stood in one corner, and as Betty looked at it, a
mouse crept from under the tattered valance, stared at her in alarm
and suddenly darted back again, in terror of intrusion so unusual. A
casement window swung open, on a broken hinge, and a strong branch of
ivy, having forced its way inside, had thrown a covering of leaves over
the deep ledge, and was beginning to climb the inner woodwork. Through
the casement was to be seen a heavenly spread of country, whose rolling
lands were clad softly in green pastures and thick-branched trees.

"This is the Rosebud Boudoir," said Lady Anstruthers, smiling faintly.
"All the rooms have names. I thought them so delightful, when I first
heard them. The Damask Room--the Tapestry Room--the White Wainscot
Room--My Lady's Chamber. It almost broke my heart when I saw what they
looked like."

"It would be very interesting," Betty commented slowly, "to make them
look as they ought to look."

A remote fear rose to the surface of the expression in Lady Anstruthers'
eyes. She could not det