"This here room, you know, Miss, is the dressing-room properly of the green chamber." "Lady Jane does not use it, though?" replied the new visitor. "But the General, when he comes back," insinuated Mrs. Sinnott. "Of course, he shall have it. I'll remove then; but in the meantime, liking these rooms, from old remembrances, best of any, I will occupy them, Beatrix; _this_ as a dressing-room, and the apartment _there_ as bed-room. I hope I don't give you a great deal of trouble," added Lady Alice, addressing the housekeeper, with an air that plainly said that she did not care a pin whether she did or not. So this point was settled, and Lady Alice sent for her maid and her boxes; and rising, she approached the door of the green chamber, and pointing to it, said to Beatrix-- "And so Lady Jane has this room. Do you like her, Beatrix?" "I can't say I know her, grandmamma." "No, I dare say not. It is a large room--too large for my notion of a cheerful bed-room." The old lady drew near, and knocked. "She's not there?" "No, she's in the terrace-garden." Lady Alice pushed the door open, and looked in. "A very long room. That room is longer than my drawing-room at Wardlock, and that is five and thirty feet long. Dismal, I say--though so much light, and that portrait--Sir Harry smirking there. What a look of duplicity in that face! He was an old man when I can remember him; an old beau; a wicked old man, rouged and whitened; he used to paint under his eyelashes, and had, they said, nine or ten sets of false teeth, and always wore a black curled wig that made his contracted countenance more narrow. There were such lines of cunning and meanness about his eyes, actually crossing one another. Jekyl hated him, I think. I don't think anybody but a fool could have really liked him; he was so curiously selfish, and so contemptible; he was attempting the life of a wicked young man at seventy!" Lady Alice had been speaking as it were in soliloquy, staring drearily on the clever portrait in gold lace and ruffles, stricken by the spell of that painted canvas into a dream. "Your grandpapa, my dear, was not a good man; and I believe he injured my poor son irreparably, and your _father_. Well--these things, though never forgotten, are best not spoken of when people happen to be connected. For the sake of others we bear our pain in silence; but the heart knoweth its own bitterness." And so saying, the old lady drew back from the threshold of Lady Jane's apartment, and closed the door with a stern countenance. CHAPTER XX. An Altercation. Almost at the same moment Sir Jekyl entered the hexagon, or, as it was more pleasantly called, the Window dressing-room, from the lobby. He was quite radiant, and, in that warm evening light, struck Lady Alice as looking quite marvellously youthful.