that no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gave
orders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struck
exceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round the
ground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On this
point alone--the point of warmth--had Mr. Melrose's letters shown a
disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness
of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English
grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to
sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.
I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers
already at the thought of Cumbria."

Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high
ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the
sitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.

"Well, I didn't build the house!" thought the agent with a quiet
exasperation in his mind, the result of much correspondence; and having
completed his tour of inspection, which included the modest supper now
cooking according to Mr. Melrose's orders--Mrs. Melrose had had nothing
to do with it--in the vast and distant kitchen, the young man hung up his
wet overcoat, sat himself down by the hall fire, drew a newspaper from
his pocket, and deliberately applied himself to it, till the carriage
should arrive.

Meanwhile through the rain and wind outside, the expected owner of
Threlfall Tower and his wife and child were being driven through the
endless and intricate lanes which divided the main road between Keswick
and Pengarth from the Tower.