looked up Cray's Folly and had found it to be one of a series of houses
erected by the eccentric and wealthy man whose name it bore. He had had
a mania for building houses with towers, in which his rival--and
contemporary--had been William Beckford, the author of "Vathek," a work
which for some obscure reason has survived as well as two of the three
towers erected by its writer.

I became conscious of a keen sense of anticipation. In this, I think,
the figure of Miss Val Beverley played a leading part. There was
something pathetic in the presence of this lonely English girl in so
singular a household; for if the menage at Cray's Folly should prove
half so strange as Colonel Menendez had led us to believe, then truly
we were about to find ourselves amid unusual people.

Presently the road inclined southward somewhat and we entered the
fringe of the trees. I noticed one or two very ancient cottages, but no
trace of the modern builder. This was a fragment of real Old England,
and I was not sorry when presently we lost sight of the square tower;
for amidst such scenery it was an anomaly and a rebuke.

What Paul Harley's thoughts may have been I cannot say, but he
preserved an unbroken silence up to the very moment that we came to the
gate lodge.

The gates were monstrosities of elaborate iron scrollwork,
craftsmanship clever enough in its way, but of an ornate kind more in
keeping with the orange trees of the South than with this wooded Surrey
countryside.

A very surly-looking girl, quite obviously un-English (a daughter of