Country homes -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction
So, first walking down the gallery in which they were, to the right, and
then entering a passage by a turn on the left, they reached the front
gallery which runs parallel to that at the head of the stairs.
"Where have you put Beatrix?"
"She wished the room next mine, please, sir, up-stairs," answered the
housekeeper.
"Near the front--eh?"
"The left side, please, sir, as you look from the front," replied she.
"_From_ the front?" he repeated.
"From the front," she reiterated.
"Over there, then?" he said, pointing upward to the left.
"That will be about it, sir," she answered.
"How many rooms have we here in a row?" he asked, facing down the
gallery, with its file of doors at each side.
"Four bed-rooms and three dressing-rooms at each side."
"Ay, well now, I'll tell you who's coming, and how to dispose of them."
So Sir Jekyl quartered his friends, as he listed, and then said he--
"And the large room at the other end, here to the right--come along."
And Sir Jekyl marched briskly in the direction indicated.
"Please, sir," said the slim, pale housekeeper, with the odd leer in her
eye, overtaking him quietly.
"Ay, here it is," said he, not minding her, and pushing open the door of
a dressing-room at the end of the gallery. "Inside this, I remember."
"But that's the green chamber, sir," continued Mrs. Gwynn, gliding
beside him as he traversed the floor.
"The room we call Sir Harry's room, I know--capital room--eh?"
"I don't suppose," began the pale lady, with a sinister sharpness.
"Well?" he demanded, looking down in her face a little grimly.
"It's the green chamber, sir," she said, with a hard emphasis.
"You said so before, eh?" he replied.
"And I did not suppose, sir, you'd think of putting anyone there," she
continued.
"Then you're just as green as the chamber," said Sir Jekyl, with a
chuckle.
And he entered the room, holding the candle high in air, and looking
about him a little curiously, the light tread and sharp pallid face of
Donica Gwynn following him.
CHAPTER V.
Sir Jekyl bethinks him of Pelter and Crowe.
The Baronet held his candle high in air, as I have said, as he gazed
round him inquisitively. The thin housekeeper, with her pale lips
closed, and her odd eyes dropped slantingly toward the floor, at the
corner of the room, held hers demurely in her right finger and thumb,
her arms being crossed.
The room was large, and the light insufficient. Still you could not help
seeing at a glance that it must be, in daylight, a tolerably cheerful
one. It was roomy and airy, with a great bow-window looking to the front
of the building, of which it occupied the extreme left, reaching about
ten feet from the level of the more ancient frontage of the house. The
walls were covered with stamped leather, chiefly green and gold, and the
whole air of the room, even in its unarranged state, though somewhat
quaint and faded, was wonderfully gay and cozy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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