his bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He would
take them by surprise.


CHAPTER II.

He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take. All was
quiet; Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with
pleasure at the familiar pictures and furniture, at all the
little untidy signs of life that lay scattered here and there.
He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to
wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead,
deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the excavator
reconstruct from these remains; how would he people these empty
chambers? There was the long gallery, with its rows of
respectable and (though, of course, one couldn't publicly admit
it) rather boring Italian primitives, its Chinese sculptures, its
unobtrusive, dateless furniture. There was the panelled drawing-
room, where the huge chintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases of
comfort among the austere flesh-mortifying antiques. There was
the morning-room, with its pale lemon walls, its painted Venetian
chairs and rococo tables, its mirrors, its modern pictures.
There was the library, cool, spacious, and dark, book-lined from
floor to ceiling, rich in portentous folios. There was the
dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its great mahogany
table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, its
eighteenth-century pictures--family portraits, meticulous animal
paintings. What could one reconstruct from such data? There was
much of Henry Wimbush in the long gallery and the library,
something of Anne, perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all.