Reginald Blake walked briskly up the avenue. It had an excessively dreary appearance, for the black looking trees with their angular branches seemed starved and attenuated while the leaves underfoot were sodden with rain. The marble statues which were standing here and there, wore a disconsolate look, as if they longed for the sunny skies of their native Italy, and mutely protested against this misty climate which discoloured and marred their beauty. When he arrived at the terrace, the long white façade of the house seemed grim and uninviting. No smoke ascended from the slender chimneys, no face appeared at the bare staring windows, and the terrace, which should have been thronged with gay company, was silent and deserted, chilling the very soul with its mute sense of desolation. The young man rang the bell in the monstrous porch, and before the harsh jangling had ceased to echo through the dreary house, the door was opened by Jellicks. On recognising Blake, she wriggled a welcome and admitted him into the vault-like hall which still retained the musty smell observed by Nestley. Outside the grey sky, inside the grey twilight, it seemed as though the sun had not warmed this dismal place with his cheerful beams for centuries. "I want to see Miss Challoner," said Reginald, when the heavy door was once more closed, "is she at home?" Jellicks replied that she was, in a serpent-like hiss, and then, still more like a serpent, she wriggled along the dark corridor on the ground floor followed by Blake, who felt depressed by the surrounding atmosphere of decay. At length she stopped midway in the passage and on knocking at a door was bidden by a thin voice, seemingly that of Miss Cassy, to enter. Reginald did so, and Jellicks having twisted herself apologetically out of the room, he stepped forward to greet Una and Cassandra, who were seated in the wide window looking out on to the white terrace and dreary landscape. Una, flushed with life and beauty, seemed somewhat out of place in this charnel house though, truth to tell, the room had a more homelike appearance than the rest of the Grange. Not very large, panelled with carved oak, dark and solemn-looking, it was hung round with pictures in tarnished gilt frames, the floor being covered with a comfortable-looking carpet of reddish tint. In the huge fireplace burned a goodly fire, which somewhat warmed the chill atmosphere. The furniture was quaint and old-fashioned, of all dates, ranging from heavy oak tables of Tudor days to spindle-legged Chippendale chairs and curiously inlaid cabinets of more modern construction. There was only one window in the room, a deep oriel with benches set in its depths and its diamond panes rich with brightly tinted escutcheons of the Garsworth family. A quaint room of ancient 

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