Two hours later Maurice Clissold was at the gate of Penwyn Manor. The girl Elspeth admitted him. She had bound up her coarse black hair, which had been rough and wild as a mustang’s mane when he last saw her, and wore a neat stuff gown and a clean white muslin cap, instead of the picturesque half gipsy costume she had worn on that former occasion. This at least was a concession to Mrs. Penwyn’s tastes, and argued that even Elspeth’s impish nature had been at last brought under Madge’s softening influence. ‘Anything amiss with your grandmother?’ asked Maurice, surprised at not seeing that specimen of the Meg Merrilies tribe. ‘Yes, sir, she’s very ill.’ ‘What is the matter with her?’ ‘Bilious fever,’ answered the girl, curtly; and Maurice passed on. He had no leisure now to concern himself about Rebecca Mason, though he had in no wise forgotten those curious facts which made her presence at Penwyn Manor a mystery. There were more dead leaves drifting about than on his last visit, and the advance of Autumn had made itself obvious in decay, which all the industry of gardeners could not conceal. The pine groves were strewn with fallen cones. The chestnuts were dropping their prickly green balls, the chrysanthemums and China asters had a ragged look, the glory of the geranium tribe was over, and even those combinations of colour which modern gardeners contrive from flowerless plants seemed to lose all glow and brightness under the dull grey sky. To Maurice’s mind, knowing that he was a messenger of trouble, the Manor House had a gloomy look. He asked to see the Squire, and was ushered at once into the library, a room which Churchill had built. It was lighted from the top by a large ground-glass dome, and was lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases of ebonized wood, relieved with narrow lines of gold. In each of the four angles stood a pedestal of dark green serpentine, surmounted by a marble bust—Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Goethe, the four great representatives of European literature. A noble room, filled with the noblest books. Such a room as a man, having made for himself, would love as if it were a sentient thing. These books, looking down upon him on every side, were as the souls of the mighty dead. Here, shut in from the outer world, he could never be companionless. Churchill was seated at a table reading. He started up at Maurice’s entrance, and received him courteously, cordially even, so far as words may express cordiality, but with a sudden troubled look which did not escape Maurice, transient as it was. ‘Glad to see you here again, Clissold; but why didn’t you go straight to the ladies? You’ll find them in the hall. Most of our friends have left us, so you’ll be quite an acquisition this dull weather.’ ‘You are very good, but I regret to say that the business which brings me here to-day denies me the right to approach Mrs. Penwyn. I come as a harbinger of trouble.’