For Maradick, in these strange new days into which he was entering, its charm lay in its age. That first view with the dark, widening staircase that passed into hidden lights and mysteries overhead and turned so nobly towards you the rich gleam of its dark brown oak, the hall with its wide fireplace and passages that shone, as all true passages should, like little cups of light and shadow, grey and blue and gold, before vanishing into darkness—this first glimpse had delighted him; it was a hall that was a perfect test of the arriving visitor, and Maradick had felt that he himself had been scarcely quite the right thing. It was almost as though he ought to have apologised for the colourless money-making existence that had hitherto been his; he had felt this vaguely and had been a little uncomfortable. But there were things higher up that were better still. There were rooms that had, most wisely, been untouched, and their dark, mysterious panelling, the wistful scent of dried flowers and the wax of dying candles; the suggestion—so that he held his breath sometimes to listen whether it were really so—of rustling brocades and the tiny click of shining heels on the polished floor, was of a quite unequalled magic for him. Of course there was imagination in it, and in the last few days these things had grown and extended their influence over him, but there must have been something there before, he argued, to impress so matter-of-fact and solid a gentleman. There was one room that drew him with especial force, so that sometimes, before going to bed, he would enter with his candle raised high above his head, and watch the shadow on the floor and the high gloom of the carved ceiling. It contained a little minstrels gallery supported on massive pillars of gleaming oak, and round the bottom of the platform were carved the heads of grinning lions, reminding one of that famous Cremona violin of Herr Prespil’s. In the centre of the room was an old table with a green baize cloth, and against the wall, stiffly ranged and dusty from disuse, high-backed quaintly carved chairs, but for the rest no carpet and no pictures on the dark, thick walls. It was sometimes used for dancing, and at times for a meeting or a sale of work; or perchance, if there were gentlemen musically inclined, for chamber music. But it was empty during half the year, and no one disturbed its dust; it reminded Maradick of that tower in the market-place. They were, both of them, melancholy survivals, but he applauded their bravery in surviving at all, and he had almost a personal feeling for them in that he would have liked them to know that there was, at least, one onlooker who appreciated their being there.