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Her young ladyship was not so indifferent to human affairs as her attendant. She said: "I must know what that is. They won't send to tell me. Come back!" She had said it, and started, before that bell gave in and retired from public life. Past the Knellers and Lelys, among the Van Dycks, a scared figure, bearing a missive.

Here also are some Lelys, including "Nelly Gwynn". Next are two rooms, one leading from the other, given to German and Flemish pictures and to miniatures, both of which are interesting. In the first are more Dürers, and that alone would make it a desirable resort.

Half the old mantelpieces gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys and worse Highmores the most despicable collection of family portraits she had ever set eyes upon! Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted penitently.

The ball-room, lined with Vandycks and Lelys, glowed softly with electric light; the picture gallery had been banked with flowers and carpeted with red, and the beautiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it, challenging the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls. Rose's card was soon full to overflowing.

Corridors on whose floors one walked up and down hill; great chambers full of memories, and here and there indulging in a ghost. Tudor rooms with Holbeins between the windows, invisible to man; Jacobean rooms with Van Dycks, nearly as regrettably invisible; Lelys and Knellers, much more regrettably visible.

This visit is recorded because it made a profound impression upon a plastic mind. John had never sat in the seats of the mighty. Verney Boscobel was a delightful old house, but it might have been put, stables and all, into White Ladies, and never found again. Fluff showed John the famous Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits, the Van Dycks and Lelys, the Romneys and Richmonds.

"But after all, Daphne, you know they are Trescoes!" this with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys. Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young face. Yet it was a pretty mouth the mouth, above all, of one with no doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world.

Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores, the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys.

In the great hall, staring Lelys and Knellers looked down from their high, gilded frames; the glaring lights of a great crystal chandelier threw a flood of rays over the scene at once brilliant and dazzling. Steele stepped toward the window, paused; his eyes seemed searching the throng. They found what they sought, a slender, erect form, the gown soft, white, like foam; a face, animated, joyous.

His mother, looking on, said to herself that he was angry and with good reason. But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled. "Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still discussing them as we used to do?" Daphne started. "You know this house, then?" The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs.