She was an odd-looking woman--some years turned of fifty, thin, with a longish face and a fine, white, glazed skin. There was something queer about her eyes: you soon discovered it to arise from their light colour and something that did not quite match in their pupils. On entering the hall, where the Baronet had lighted a candle, having thrown his hat on the table, and merely loosed his muffler and one or two buttons of his outside coat, she smiled a chill gleam of welcome with her pale lips, and dropped two sharp little courtesies. "Well, old Donica, and how do ye do?" said the Baronet, smiling, with a hand on each thin grey silk shoulder. "Long time since I saw you. But, egad! you grow younger and younger, you pretty old rogue;" and he gave her pale, thin cheek a playful tap with his fingers. "Pretty well, please, Sir Jekyl, thank ye," she replied, receding a little with dry dignity. "Very welcome, sir, to Marlowe. Miss Beatrix looks very well, I am happy to see; and you, sir, also." "And you're glad to see us, I know?" "Certainly, sir, glad to see you," said Mrs. Gwynn, with another short courtesy. "The servants not all come? No, nor Ridley with the plate. He'll arrive to-morrow; and--and we shall have the house full in little more than a week. Let us go up and look at the rooms; I forget them almost, by Jove--I really do--it's so long since. Light you another, and we'll do very well." "You'll see them better by daylight, sir. I kept everything well aired and clean. The house looks wonderful--it do," replied Mrs. Gwynn, accompanying the Baronet up the broad oak stairs. "If it looks as fresh as you, Donica, it's a miracle of a house--egad! you're a wonder. How you skip by my side, with your little taper, like a sylph in a ballet, egad!" "You wear pretty well yourself, Sir Jekyl," drily remarked the white-faced sylph, who had a sharp perpendicular line between her eyebrows, indicative of temper. "So they tell me, by Jove. We're pretty well on though, Donnie--eh? Everyone knows my age--printed, you know, in the red book. You've the advantage of me there--eh, Don?" "I'm just fifty-six, sir, and I don't care if all the world knewd it." "All the world's curious, I dare say, on the point; but I shan't tell them, old Gwynn," said Sir Jekyl. "Curious or no, sir, it's just the truth, and I don't care to hide it. Past that folly now, sir, and I don't care if I wor seventy, and a steppin' like a--" "A sylph," supplied he. "Yes--a sylph--into my grave. It's a bad world, and them that's suffered in it soon tires on it, sir." "_You_ have not had a great deal to trouble you. Neither chick, nor child, nor husband, egad! So here we are." They were now standing on the gallery, at the head of the great staircase. "These are the rooms your letter says are not furnished--eh? Let us come to the front gallery."