never looked so like to the divine painter's
faces as then.

"Better not to mention it at all to her
father," she said. "Forget the words I had
spoken altogether. That dazzling lineage of
mine—the great ancestors——"

Ah, yes! I had nearly forgotten them
altogether. The maiden of low degree had
swept them away from my brain.

Shall it be confessed that, as difficulty
seemed to show itself, I seemed to see
Foreclosure standing behind with his arm up,
quite infuriated? A sudden terror of him
filled me, as I found this last chance of escape
slipping from me.

It was incomprehensible. Such a wooing
garden scene was never thought of before.
There was some one coming down the walk
most inopportunely.

A servant with a letter: having ridden over
from Holm Hollies with word that I was
badly wanted there. A sudden coldness at
my heart. Had Foreclosure come? I
departed hastily, promising to be back on the
morrow. It left that garden scene a riddle
unguessed.

At the Holm Hollies what I had been
wanted for, I found to be gone. Certain
strange men had wanted speech of me, who,
not finding me, said they would look for me
over at the baronet's.

VI.

THE shape of the Amber Room was octagon,
and there were large squares of faded silk,
once of a rich golden yellow, let into panels
all round. There was abundance of black
oak framing about these panels; sprouting in
knobs and foliage here and there, and
converging in a huge boss at the centre of the
domed ceiling. There was an old chair and
an old oak escritoire, where I sat and wrote;
and where, too, my father sat and wrote; and
where, too, those who had been before him
had sat and written also. There were shelves
laden with pedigree books; and there were
great oak chests open, on the floor;
whence overflowed more pedigree documents,
deeds, and patents—a great heraldic litter.
Fronting the escritoire at which I was
sitting, late at night, was a portrait of the
last Baron Sundon, of Holm Hollies, a fine
dignified gentleman, in a flowing periwig,
green velvet coat, and star—the pillar
and glory of the family; great in the state,
greater in the county with an aristocratic
curl on his lips, and full, smooth cheeks,
made fuller by the wig; bluish, aristocratic
fingers nestling under his lace frill. Those
bluish fingers advanced out of the rich lace
frill, only to touch the fingers of the nobility;
for he was conscious of our prodigious
purity of blood, and would have borne that
his precious family flesh should be torn with
hot pincers, sooner than have it defiled by
plebeian touch. And now, for some century
and a half, had he been looking down out
of his mellow-toned background at those
who came after, and sat at the oaken escritoire.
Perhaps he might be taken as watching
eternally, lest any of his race should
go astray, and slur the stock he had been
so precious of.

Well, it was now late at night; and, in
this very Amber Room I had been sitting in
the darkness, until the time had crept on very
close to midnight. What had been my
entertainment during those weary hours would
not be hard to conceive; dismallest fancies
and heaviest forebodings; sad thoughts of
how this precious birthright was departing
from me, being basely sold, in fact, for money.
There I sat, in the darkness, until the clock
began chiming outside, preparatory to striking
the hour, and then it pealed out slowly twelve
o'clock.

I went to light the lamp, lit it, and came
back again to the old escritoire, sitting
down fronting the first Baron Sundon, in his
green velvet coat and ruffles. The dull light
of the lamp played upon the smooth, full
cheeks, and showed him looking down placidly
and unconsciously upon (it was not too hard
a word) his unworthy descendant. Then I
fell to thinking if I should have chanced to
have been son of his, or had he lived up to
this night, and I had the task before me
of breaking to him news of this foul blot;
I began thinking how the fair, placid cheeks
of the first Baron Sundon would have been
contorted with rage; how he would have
gone nigh to bursting a precious blood-
vessel; how he would have torn those
spotless white ruffles; how he would have cursed
me, and turned me out of doors; how he
would, in all human probability, have died
of it. For that matter, there was my
poor father, now in the Family Vault; and I
could speak for a certainty as to how it would
have affected him. It would have sent him
down to the Family Vault prematurely. Why,
even I could see the old Lord of Sundon
frowning down on me, just as the clock
chimed two quarters PAST twelve.

VII.

Sundon village church was full of Sundons.
It was worth coming miles to see. It was
a perfect heraldic panorama: every aisle
and corner being crowded with tombs and
effigies of dead Sundons. There were Sundons
in armour, and Sundons in flowing wigs, with
their hands in praying postures on their
breasts, lying out stiffly on great stone tombs:
there were Sundons kneeling on cushions
in pairs together, and with frills about
their necks, all wrought out in snowy white
marble.

All that august company lie together
beneath the low-roof church, which has a
short, thick tower outside, heavily cased with
ivy; and whose walls slant outward quite
out of all shape. The long roof seems to start
almost from the ground, those old slanting