ng else
about her." She looked round the place, not with the casual indifference
of a fine young lady, carelessly curious to see what she had not seen
before, but with an alert, questioning interest.

"What a big place," she said to her ladyship. "What substantial walls!
What huge joints must have been roasted before such a fireplace."

She drew near to the enormous, antiquated cooking place.

"People were not very practical when this was built," she said. "It
looks as if it must waste a great deal of coal. Is it----?" she looked
at Mrs. Noakes. "Do you like it?"

There was a practical directness in the question for which Mrs. Noakes
was not prepared. Until this moment, it had apparently mattered little
whether she liked things or not. The condition of her implements of
trade was one of her grievances--the ancient fireplace and ovens the
bitterest.

"It's out of order, miss," she answered. "And they don't use 'em like
this in these days."

"I thought not," said Miss Vanderpoel.

She made other inquiries as direct and significant of the observing eye,
and her passage through the lower part of the establishment left Mrs.
Noakes and her companions in a strange but not unpleasurable state of
ferment.

"Think of a young lady that's never had nothing to do with kitchens,
going straight to that shameful old fireplace, and seeing what it meant
to the woman that's got to use it. 'Do you like it?' she says. If she'd
been a cook herself, she couldn't have put it straighter. She's got
eyes."

"She's been using them all over the place," said Robert. "Her and her
ladyship's been into rooms that's not been opened for years."

"More shame to them that should have opened 'em," remarked Mrs. Noakes.
"Her ladyship's a poor, listless thing--but her spirit was broken long
ago.

"This one will mend it for her, perhaps," said the man servant. "I
wonder what's going to happen."

"Well, she's got a look with her--the new one--as if where she was
things would be likely to happen. You look out. The place won't seem so
dead and alive if we've got something to think of and expect."

"Who are the solicitors Sir Nigel employs?" Betty had asked her sister,
when their pilgrimage through the house had been completed.

Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard, a firm which for several generations
had transacted the legal business of much more important estates than
Stornham, held its affairs in hand. Lady Anstruthers knew nothing of
them, but tha