Chandos made no answer, but walked on, passing from room to room, along the wide front of the building. He gazed around him as he went with a slow pace, but only twice he stopped. Once it was to look at a picture; that of a lady in a riding habit. It was an early portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, with great breadth and power, and some careless drawing and want of finish, in subsidiary parts. But the face was full of life. The liquid eyes, with the clear light streaming through the cornea, and illuminating the iris, seemed gazing into your heart. The lips spoke to you; but there was a sadness in the tones, which poured melancholy into the gazer. "Ay, she had an unhappy life of it, poor thing," said Lockwood, at once interpreting the expression in the portrait, and the feelings in his companion's heart. "I, of course, had no reason to love her; but yet, I grieved for her from my soul." Chandos turned abruptly round, laid his left hand upon Lockwood's shoulder, and seemed about to reply almost bitterly. But then he stopped suddenly, looked him full in the face, with the finger of his right hand extended to his companion's breast, and with a sad shake of the head, moved away. The next time he stopped, it was before a small work-table, which he gazed at for a minute or two, and then said, "If there is a sale, Lockwood, as I dare say there will be, I should like to have that. Purchase it for me; it cannot sell for much." He then quickened his pace, and proceeded without a pause to the abbot's kitchen. There was apparent, however, as he went along, a quivering of the lip at times, and an occasional wide expansion of the nostril, which made Lockwood think that strong emotions were busy within him. Whatever they were, he threw off his gloom when he joined the good keeper and his wife at their meal; and though not gay, he chatted with the rest, and sometimes laughed; ate their good cheer with a hearty appetite, and drank more than one glass of old ale. The dinner was over, and they were sitting, about two o'clock, with that pause for digestion, the necessity for which all animals feel, when a grating sound, as of carriage wheels, was heard; and going to the window, the three men saw a post-chaise, dragged on slowly by two sorry jades, through the loose stuff of the long-neglected road. "My goody! who can that be?" cried the keeper's wife, looking over her husband's shoulder. "It is Roberts, the steward," said Chandos, with a grave face. "Do not let him be brought in here, Lockwood. I will see him afterwards; but it must be alone." Lockwood nodded his head significantly, and went out with the keeper, who hurried to the principal entrance of Winslow Abbey, towards which the chaise directed its course. "Don't say anything at present of the young gentleman being here," whispered Lockwood to the keeper, as the latter unbolted the great doors. An acquiescent nod was the reply, and the next moment Mr. Roberts approached the entrance.