"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?" "Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind really," said Pauline, reassuring herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up." She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo. "Oh, Guy," she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then. Did you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?" She had gripped his arm, and Guy startled by her gesture exclaimed rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves. "Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that the ivy is giving your face." "What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony." They went half way downstairs to the door that opened on a large balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while. All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them that this small parlour was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long vanished owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate and in the window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards. "I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is just the room for us." "It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline doubtfully. "Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon," he answered. "No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so near to being lived in by dead people." "And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked with that sidelong mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved. Pauline looked back over her shoulder once: then she came across to where he invited her to sit in the window-bay. "I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look, Pauline. Pauline, look! _1770. R.G. P.F._ inside a heart. Oh, what a pity it wasn't _P.G._ for Pauline Grey. Still the _G_ can stand for Guy. Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! _P.F.?_ We can find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish, you so."