nother apartment, which was
peculiarly dedicated to the use of the mistress of the mansion--having,
on the one side, access to the family bedroom; and, on the other, to the
still-room which communicated with the garden. There was also a
small door which, ascending a few steps, led to that balcony, already
mentioned, that overhung the kitchen; and the same passage, by a
separate door, admitted to the principal gallery in the chapel; so that
the spiritual and temporal affairs of the Castle were placed almost at
once within the reach of the same regulating and directing eye.[*]

[*] This peculiar collocation of apartments may be seen at Haddon
Hall, Derbyshire, once a seat of the Vernons, where, in the lady's
pew in the chapel, there is a sort of scuttle, which opens into
the kitchen, so that the good lady could ever and anon, without
much interruption of her religious duties, give an eye that the
roast-meat was not permitted to burn, and that the turn-broche did
his duty.

In the tapestried room, from which issued these various sally-ports, the
Countess and Lady Peveril were speedily seated; and the former, smiling
upon the latter, said, as she took her hand, "Two things have happened
to-day, which might have surprised me, if anything ought to surprise me
in such times:--the first is, that yonder roundheaded fellow should have
dared to use such insolence in the house of Peveril of the Peak. If your
husband is yet the same honest and downright Cavalier whom I once knew,
and had chanced to be at home, he would have thrown the knave out of
window. But what I wonder at still more, Margaret, is your generalship.
I hardly thought you had courage sufficient to have taken such decided
measures, after keeping on terms with the man so long. When he spoke of
justices and warrants, you looked so overawed that I thought I felt the
clutch of the parish-beadles on my shoulder, to drag me to prison as a
vagrant."

"We owe Master Bridgenorth some deference, my dearest lady," answered
the Lady Peveril; "he has served us often and kindly, in these late
times; but neither he, nor any one else, shall insult the Countess of
Derby in the house of Margaret Stanley."

"Thou art become a perfect heroine, Margaret," replied the Countess.

"Two sieges, and alarms innumerable," said Lady Peveril, "may have
taught me presence of mind. My courage is, I believe, as slender as
ever."

"Presence of mind _is_ courage," answer