pale-coloured mansion in the background, with lights showing
behind curtains in several widely separated windows;
what he had taken to be a conservatory revealed itself now
to be a glass gallery, built along the front of the central
portion of this house.

A profusion of hospitable lights--tall wax-candles
in brackets among the vines against the trellised wall--
gave to this outlying entrance what the stranger felt
to be a delightful effect. Its smooth tiled floor,
comfortably bestrewn with rugs, was on a level with the
path outside. There were low easy-chairs here, and a little
wicker table bearing books and a lady's work-basket.
Further on, giant chrysanthemum blooms were massed beneath
the clusters of pale plumbago-flowers on the trellis.
Directly in front, across the dozen feet of this
glazed vestibule, the broad doorway of the house proper
stood open--with warm lights glowing richly upon dark
woods in the luxurious obscurity within.

What Thorpe noted most of all, however, was the servants
who seemed to swarm everywhere. The two who had alighted
from the trap had contrived somehow mysteriously to multiply
themselves in the darkness. All at once there were a
number of young men--at the horse's head, at the back and
sides of the trap, at the first doorway, and the second,
and beyond--each presenting such a smooth-faced, pallid,
brown-clad replica of all the others that Thorpe knew
he should never be able to tell them apart.