herself back in the romantic mood, and to see herself and her experiment
anew in the romantic light, when her maid knocked at the door, and
distraction entered with letters, and a cup of tea.

* * * * *

An hour later Miss Mallory left her room behind her, and went tripping
down the broad oak staircase of Beechcote Manor.

By this time romance was uppermost again, and self-congratulation. She
was young--just twenty-two; she was--she knew it--agreeable to look
upon; she had as much money as any reasonable woman need want; she had
already seen a great deal of the world outside England; and she had
fallen headlong in love with this charming old house, and had now, in
spite of various difficulties, managed to possess herself of it, and
plant her life in it. Full of ghosts it might be; but _she_ was its
living mistress henceforth; nor was it either ridiculous or snobbish
that she should love it and exult in it--quite the contrary. And she
paused on the slippery stairs, to admire the old panelled hall below,
the play of wintry sunlight on the oaken surfaces she herself had
rescued from desecrating paint, and the effect of some old Persian rugs,
which had only arrived from London the night before, on the dark
polished boards. For Diana, there were two joys connected with the old
house: the joy of entering in, a stranger and conqueror, on its guarded
and matured beauty, and the joy of adding to that beauty by a deft
modernness. Very deft, and tender, and skilful it must be. But no one
could say that time-worn Persian rugs, with their iridescent blue and
greens and rose reds--or old Italian damask and cut-velvet from Genoa,
or Florence, or Venice--were out of harmony with the charming Jacobean
rooms. It was the horrible furniture of the Vavasours, the ancestral