Within, he fancied there was a smell of damp. Mrs. Mervyn and the old housekeeper assured him, as they accompanied him through the unused rooms where the furniture was carefully shrouded in holland and the carpets rolled up, that during the wet weather there had been fires everywhere, and that at a couple of days’ notice the house would be ready for occupation. “You could invite any number of people, sir. I’d undertake to be ready for them,” said Mrs. Gray, who had been housemaid at the Pinewood when Sir Roderick was a young man. “The parties as old Mr. Pym had here during the shooting! And how they used to enjoy theirselves! I only wish as how those times would come again, sir. As I said before, I’d be ready for ’em, as long as you’d let me have two housemaids and a man as knew something of his business.” Hugh looked sharply at her—as if the tempter himself had spoken through her lips. “If I had people here—the whole place would have to be refurnished,” he said, turning to Mrs. Mervyn. “It all looks—so faded—so worn out.” Last night’s splendid scene was in his mind. Not for one moment had his memory failed to reproduce it. Even as he looked at the good old furniture—(they were standing in the drawing-room, he, Mrs. Mervyn, and the housekeeper)—he seemed to see the opera house as background to the central figure of the princess in her pearl-embroidered robe, wearing priceless gems on her fair neck and arms and in her black hair as carelessly as if they were glass. “I daresay it does all look poor after the houses you are accustomed to see,” said Mrs. Mervyn, indulgently. Good, untiringly faithful in well-doing as she was, her woman’s natural instincts remained; she daily witnessed by far too much squalor and poverty, and at the faint promise of something that would “brighten up the place,” as she termed it, she revived as an old war-horse pricks up his ears at the sound of the trumpet. “But, you know, all these things are solid and good, and at a comparatively small expense you could make the house look utterly different,” she added, persuasively. Then, while Mrs. Gray stood by, intensely interested, she unfolded the poor old chocolate-coloured draperies, and showing Hugh how threadbare and faded they were, suggested numberless little plans for beautifying the rooms at a comparatively trivial outlay. He listened with seeming interest. But he hardly heard what she was saying. He was building a castle in the air. He was reorganising the whole place on a far grander scale than would ever have occurred to Mrs. Mervyn’s frugal mind—he was preparing it for the entertainment of such guests as Sir David and Lady Forwood. (Sir David and Lady Forwood—his thoughts presumed no further. Hugh Paull, hitherto sincere, true to himself, had taken the first plunge into the bottomless waters of self-deception!) “It seems a shame that a house with such capacities should be allowed to be in this state, doesn’t it?” he said to Mrs. Mervyn.