The twilight was falling. The hall was empty of life, and filled
with a sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it.
They did not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the
minstrel's gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on
their dull natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed
deserted as they followed the false earl across the second
court--with the true one stealing after them like a knave--little
imagining that bright eyes were watching them from the curtains of
every window like stars from the clear spaces and cloudy edges of
heaven. To the north-west corner of the court he led them, and
through a sculptured doorway up the straight wide ascent of stone
called the grand staircase. At the top he turned to the right, along
a dim corridor, from which he entered a suite of bedrooms and
dressing-rooms, over whose black floors he led the trampling
hob-nailed shoes without pity either for their polish or the labour
of the housemaids in restoring it.

In this way he reached the stair in the bell-tower, ascending which
he brought them into a narrow dark passage ending again in a
downward stair, at the foot of which they found themselves in the
long picture-gallery, having entered it in the recess of one of its
large windows. At the other end of the gallery he crossed into the
dining-room, then through an ante-chamber entered the drawing-room,
where the ladies, apprised of their approach, kept still behind
curtains and high chairs, until they had passed through, on their
way to cross the archway of the main entrance, and through the
library gain the region of household economy and cookery. Thither I
will not drag my reader after them. Indeed the earl, who had been
dogging them like a Fate, ever emerging on their track but never
beheld, had already began to pay his part of the penalty of the joke