I discerned signs of emotion upon the butler's white face as he
showed us to our rooms, up a double stair & along a square
balustraded gallery which ran round the top of the old hall. From this
central point, two long corridors extended the whole length of the
building, from which all the bedrooms appeared to be much more modern &
brighter than the central part of the house, but the dining room, which
opened out of the hall, was a place of shadow & gloom, a long chamber
with a dais at one end & a minstrel's gallery at the other with black
beams & a smoke-darkened ceiling. A dim line of ancestors, from the
Elizabethan knight to the Regency buck, stared down upon us.
I was glad when we retired into the modern billiard room to smoke a
cigarette.  Sir Henry felt the same and said things might seem more
cheerful in the morning.  Before I went to bed, I drew aside my curtain
