lace was in rags upon her bosom, though there were diamonds of great
value in her white hair.

And here, strangely allied, were wealth and direst poverty; the whole
place was filled with rare and costly things, pictures, statuary, china;
the floors were covered with thick carpets, and yet everything was
absolutely smothered in dust. A thick, white, blankety cloud of it lay
everywhere. It obscured the china, it dimmed the glasses of the pictures,
it piled in little drifts on the heads and arms of the dingy statues
there. Many years must have passed since a housemaid's brush or duster
had touched anything in Longdean Grange. It was like a palace of the
Sleeping Beauty, wherein people walked as in a waking dream.

The lady of the house made her way slowly to the dining-room. Here dinner
was laid out daintily and artistically enough--a _gourmet_ would have
drawn up to the table with a feeling of satisfaction. Flowers were there,
and silver and cut-glass, china with a history of its own, and the whole
set out on a tablecloth that was literally dropping to pieces.

It was a beautiful room in itself, lofty, oak panelled from floor to
roof, with a few pictures of price on the walls. There was plenty of
gleaming silver glowing like an argent moon against a purple sky, and yet
the same sense of dust and desolation was everywhere. Only the dinner
looked bright and modern.

There were two other people standing by the table, one a girl with a
handsome, intellectual face full of passion but ill repressed; the other
the big fair man known to the village as "Mr. Charles." As a matter of
fact, his name was Reginald Henson, and he was distantly related to Mrs.
Henson, the strange chatelaine of the House of the Silent Sorrow. He was