He spoke jestingly, but he drew himself up as he spoke, his lip was
supercilious, and there was an intolerant light in his eye. At that
moment he did not look a promising subject for the Liberal side of the
House, avowedly as were his sympathies in that quarter. Weir, however,
gave him an approving smile, and then commanded him to follow her.

She took him over the castle, from the dungeons below to the cell-like
rooms in the topmost towers. She led him through state bedrooms,
in which had slept many a warlike Welsh prince, whose bones could
scarcely be in worse order than the magnificence which once had
sheltered them. She piloted him down long galleries with arcades on
one side, like a cloister, and a row of rooms on the other wherein the
retainers of ancient princes of the house of Penrhyn had been wont to
rest their thews after a hard day's fight. She slid back panels and
conducted him up by secret ways to gloomy rooms, thick with cobwebs,
where treasure had been hid, and heads too loyal to a fallen king had
alone felt secure on their trunks. She led him to chambers hung with
tapestries wrought by fair, forgotten grandmothers, who over their
work had dreamed their eventless lives away. She showed him the
chapel, impressive in its ancient Norman simplicity and in its ruin,
and the great smoke-begrimed banqueting-hall, where wassails had been
held, and beauty had thought her lord a beast.

"Well," she demanded, as they paused at length on the threshold of the
picture-gallery, "what do you think of my father's castle?"

"Your father's castle is the most consistent thing I have seen for
a long time: it is an artistically correct setting for your father's
daughter. The chain of evolution is without a missing link. And