Distressed at appearing to drive up like the lady of the house, her Serene Highness insisted on stopping at the iron gates of the stately approach. There she alighted, and waited to make the best setting to rights she could of the heiress’s wind-tossed hat and cloak, and would have put her into the carriage, but that no power could persuade her to mount that triumphal car, and all that could be obtained was that she should walk in the forefront of the procession with the Colonel. There was nobody to receive them but Richards, for the servants had been paid off, and only a keeper and his wife were living in the kitchen in charge. There was a fire in the library, where the Colonel had business to transact with Richards, while the ladies and children proceeded with their explorations. It was rather awful at first in the twilight gloom of the great hall, with a painted mythological ceiling, and cold white pavement, varied by long perspective lines of black lozenges, on which every footfall echoed. The first door that they opened led into a vast and dreary dining-room, with a carpet, forming a crimson roll at one end, and long ranks of faded leathern chairs sitting in each other’s laps. At one end hung a huge picture by Snyders, of a bear hugging one dog in his forepaws and tearing open the ribs of another with his hind ones. Opposite was a wild boar impaling a hound with his tusk, and the other walls were occupied by Herodias smiling at the contents of her charger, Judith dropping the gory head into her bag, a brown St. Sebastian writhing among the arrows; and Juno extracting the painfully flesh and blood eyes of Argus to set them in her peacock’s tail. “I object to eating my dinner in a butcher’s shop,” observed Allen. “Yes, we must get them out of this place,” said his mother. “They are very valuable paintings,” interposed Ellen. “I know they are in the county history. They were collected by Sir Francis Bradford, from whom the place was bought, and he was a great connoisseur.” “Yes, they are just the horrid things great connoisseurs of the last century liked, by way of giving themselves an appetite,” said Caroline. “Are not fine pictures always horrid?” asked Jessie, in all simplicity.