lls paid no attention; Mark, supposing her to be on the verge
of a poetic frenzy, was glad to leave her in that wicker alcove under
the tulip tree and to follow Sir Charles into the house.

It was an astonishing house inside, with Gothic carving everywhere and
with ancient leaded casements built inside the sashed windows of the
exterior.

"I took an immense amount of trouble to get this place arranged to my
taste," said Sir Charles; and Mark wondered why he had bothered to
retain the outer shell, since that was all that was left of the
original. In every room there were copies, excellently done of pictures
by Botticelli and Mantegna and other pre-Raphaelite painters; the walls
were rich with antique brocades and tapestries; the ceilings were gilded
or elaborately moulded with fan traceries and groining; great
candlesticks stood in every corner; the doors were all old with
floriated hinges and huge locks--it was the sort of house in which
Victor Hugo might have put on his slippers and said, "I am at home."

"I admit nothing after 1520," said Sir Charles proudly.

Mark wondered why so fastidious a medievalist allowed the Order of St.
George to erect those three tin tabernacles and to matchboard the
interior of the Abbey. But perhaps that was only another outer shell
which would gradually be filled.

Lunch was a disappointment, because when Sir Charles began to talk about
the monastery, which was what Mark had been wanting to talk about all
the morning, Lady Landells broke in:

"I am sorry, Charles, but I'm afraid that I must beg for complete
silence at lunch, as I'm in the middle of a sonnet."

The poetess sighed, took a large mouthful of food, and sighed again.

After lunch Sir Charles took Mark to see his library, which reminded him
of a Rossetti interior and lacked only a beautiful long-necked creature,
full-lipped and auburn-haired, to sit by the casement languishing over a
cithern or gazing out through bottle-glass lights at a forlorn and
foreshortened landscape of faerie land.

"Poor Lady Landells was a little tiresome at lunch," said Sir Charles
half to himself. "She gets moods. Women seem never to grow out of
getting moods. But she has always been most kind to me, and she insists
on giving me anything I want for my house. Last year she was good enough
to buy it from me as it stands, so it's really her house, although she
has left it back to me in her will. She took rather a fancy to you by
the way."

M