The next day we were as punctual as clock-work. A pleasant, comely young peasant woman, who looked as if she had lived on fresh air all her life, met us in the great stone entrance-hall. She told us that her father would soon be at liberty, and that, with our permission, she would again show us the rooms if we wished to see them. This promised well. Fetching a huge bunch of handsome iron-wrought keys, she conducted us into the great hall of the first floor, hung with large unframed pictures of the Holy Sacrament. Then unlocking a handsome door which had once been green and gold, we entered the vast reception-room, almost bereft of furniture, but possessing a pine floor of milky whiteness and a remarkably fine stove of faience eight feet high. My father measured the length of the apartment: it was forty feet, and could have seated a hundred guests. The casements were filled with old lozenge-shaped glass set in lead, and the fine old iron trellis-work on the outside of the windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could have served as an oratory. Margaret's delight was unbounded. The father smiled quietly, and we the pioneers could scarcely refrain our pride and pleasure. But there was more to be seen. Crossing the great hall once more, we entered a large and beautiful room overlooking the main entrance. This had other furniture besides its handsome porcelain stove and inlaid floor of dark wood. There was not only a comfortable modern bed, but chairs, sofa and table; a chest of drawers too, which was covered with innumerable religious knickknacks--little sacred pictures in glass frames, miniature saints, and artificial flowers in small china pots. Having dipped her finger in a holy-water shell hanging on the wall, our guide drew back a long chintz curtain which covered the end of the room, and showed us a large and handsome chapel below. A fald-stool ran along the front of the window which, with an additional lattice of gilt and carved wood, separated the room from the church. This had evidently been in old times the apartment of the lord and his lady, and here they had knelt and listened to the holy office without mingling with their dependants below. This room, if we had the good fortune to obtain lodgings in the mansion, was to belong to the poetess, for it was full of inspiration and old-world memories.