Fanshawe felt himself grow smaller and smaller as he looked. After all, this was not the dull and level blank of existence he had supposed. This homely old man, with his Scotch accent, changed under his eyes; he became something a great deal more lofty and elevated than Mr. Charles. In his compunction and shame, the young man went as far too high in his second estimate as he had been too low in his first. As for Mr. Charles, this change gave him a simple satisfaction which it was delightful to behold. “You see, after all, there are some things worth looking at in Pitcomlie,” he said. “It is not such a humdrum house, after all, though it stands in a county so little interesting as comfortable Fife.” “Nothing could have made it a humdrum house,” said the penitent. He was not thinking of Mr. Charles’s pictures: he was thinking of--something else. Just then an unexpected summons came to the door. “Miss Heriot’s compliments, and would the gentleman step over to the north room?” the maid said, who waited, curtseying, to show the way. Mr. Charles’s countenance clouded over. “That’s poor Tom’s room,” he said. “I’ll go with the gentleman myself--and yet, no; on second thoughts I’ll not go. You two may have something to consult about, that I should not meddle with; or Marjory may think there is something. Go, as she has sent for you, Mr. Fanshawe; you can come back to me another time.” With a curious little thrill of interest, Fanshawe went, threading the turret staircase down from Mr. Charles’s rooms, and the windy passages, wondering what she could want with him. Marjory received him in a room of a very different description. It was in the back of the house, looking across the gardens to the level line of the ploughed land, and the low hills on the horizon. It was a long, narrow room, with a door opening from each end; and its decorations were of a kind as different from Mr. Charles’s study as was its form. On the walls hung two crossed swords, some old guns carefully arranged according to their antiquity, a collection of whips, fishing-rods, clubs for playing golf--worn out traces of a boyhood not yet so very long departed. In one corner was a bookcase, full of old classics, thumbed and worn, the school-books of the two boys whose progress in polite letters Pitcomlie had once been so proud of. The pictures on the walls were of the most heterogeneous character; languishing French “Etudes” in chalk, were mingled with sporting subjects, heads of dogs, portraits of sleek race-horses led by sleeker grooms, and one staring view of Pitcomlie, painted in water-colours, with very lively greens and blues, and signed “Ch. Hay-Heriot,” in bold boyish characters.