, as he stood in his eternal light gray suit
(with a badge of affliction lightly borne on his left arm), looking at
his heritage, with his cropped head a little on one side.

The sun was shining, but, like a smile on a serious face, Vandon caught
the light on all its shuttered windows, and remained grave, looking out
across its terraces to the forest.

"If it were but a villa on the Mediterranean, or a house in London," he
said to himself; "but I have no chance." And he shrugged his shoulders,
and wandered back into the house again. But, if the outside oppressed
him, the interior was not calculated to raise his spirits.

Dare had an elegant taste, which he had never hitherto been able to
gratify, for blue satin furniture and gilding; for large mirrors and
painted ceilings of lovers and cupids, and similar small deer. The old
square hall at Vandon, with its great stained glass windows,
representing the various quarterings of the Dare arms, about which he
knew nothing and cared less, oppressed him. So did the black polished
oak floor, and the walls with their white bass-reliefs of twisting
wreaths and scrolls, with busts at intervals of Cicero and Dante, and
other severe and melancholy personages. The rapiers upon the high white
chimney-piece were more to his taste. He had taken them down the first
day after his arrival, and had stamped and cut and thrust in the most
approved style, in the presence of Faust, the black poodle.

Dare was not the kind of man to be touched by it; but to many minds
there would have been something pathetic in seeing a house, which had
evidently been an object of the tender love and care of a by-gone
generation, going to rack and ruin from neglect. Careful hands had
embroidered, in the fine exquisite work of former days, marvellous
coverlets and hangings, which still adorned the long suites of empty
bedrooms. Some one had taken an elaborate pleasure in fitting up those
rooms, had put _pot-pourri_ in tall Oriental jars in the passages, had
covered the old inlaid Dutch chairs with dim needle-work.

The Dare who had lived at court, whose chariot was now the refuge of
pigeons, whose court suits, with the tissue paper still in the sleeves,
yet remained in one of the old oak chests, and whose jewelled swords
still hung in the hall, had filled one of the rooms with engravings of
the royal family and ministers of his day. The Dare who had been an
admiral had left his miniature surrounded by prints o