Mr. Hayes read his letters and seemed to take no heed of his niece's trouble. But it appeared, when breakfast was finished, that he had arranged how the morning should be spent. He announced his intention of taking young Harding over the Place, and he carried it out with a thoroughness which would have done honour to a professional guide, showing all the pictures, mentioning the size of the rooms, and relating the few family traditions--none of which, by the way, reflected any especial credit on the Rothwells. He stopped with bright-eyed appreciation before a cracked and discoloured map, where the Mitchelhurst estate was shown in its widest extent. Reynold looked silently at it, and then stalked after his host through all the chilly faded splendour of the house, shivering sometimes, sneering sometimes, but taking it all in with eager eyes, and glancing over the little man's white head at the sombre shelves of the library or the portraits on the walls. Mr. Hayes was fluent, precise, and cold. Only once did he hesitate. They had come to a small sitting-room on the ground floor, which, in spite of long disuse, still somehow conveyed the impression that it had belonged to a young man. "This was John Rothwell's favourite room," he said. He looked round. "I remember, yes, I remember, as if it were yesterday, how he used----" Harding waited, but he stood staring at the rusty grate, and left the sentence unfinished. "And to think that now he should be living from hand to mouth on the Continent!" he said at last, and compressed his lips significantly. He took the young man to the servants' hall, across which the giggling voices of two or three maids echoed shrilly, till they were suddenly silenced by the master's approach. Reynold followed him down long stone passages, and thought, as he went, how icy and desolate they must be on a black winter night. He was oppressed by the size and dreariness of the place, and bewildered by the multiplicity of turnings. "I think," said Mr. Hayes suddenly, "that I have shown you all there is to see indoors." And, as Reynold replied that he was much obliged, he pushed a door, and motioned to his guest to precede him. Reynold stepped forward, and discovered that he was in the entrance hall, facing Barbara, who had just come down the broad white stairs, and still had her hand upon the balustrade. It seemed to him as if he had come through the windings of that stony labyrinth, the hollow rooms and pale corridors, to find a richly-coloured blossom at the heart of all. "Oh, Barbara, I'll leave Mr. Harding to you now," said the old gentleman. "I'm going to my study--I must write some letters." He crossed the black and white pavement with brisk, short steps, and vanished through a doorway. "Has uncle shown you everything?" she asked. "I should think so." "It's a fine place, isn't it?" "Very fine, and very big," said Harding slowly. "Very empty, and ghostly, and dead."