"A fine old house!" Scarlett remarked, as he rose from his chair. If his companion intended to treat him to such curt, half-hostile speeches, he would leave him alone, and ask Mrs. Wilton, or one of the girls, about him, later. He might satisfy his curiosity so, more pleasantly. But, "A fine old house!" Harding repeated. "Yes, a fine, dreary, chilly, decaying, melancholy old house." He leant back in his chair and looked up at Scarlett, "Did you ever see a more hopeless place in all your life?" "Come! Not so bad as that!" "Well, it seems to me that there is no hope about it," Reynold persisted; "no hope at all. A ghastly nightmare of a house. Why doesn't somebody pull it down!" "You must have seen it under unfavourable circumstances." "Very likely. I was there last October. It might be better in the summer-time." "You stayed there?" "Yes, a few days." "Did they tell you I had been?" Scarlett asked, impulsively. "Did they speak of me--Mr. Hayes, and--Miss Strange?" The men looked at each other as the name was spoken, Reynold's dark gaze crossing the bright grey-blue gleam of Adrian's glance. "They said something of a Mr. Scarlett who had been there--yes." "And they were well, I hope?" "Well enough--then." "Then?" cried Adrian. "Then! Why, what has happened since?" "Didn't you know old Hayes was dead?" The young man drew a long breath. "No, I didn't!" "Died just a week before Christmas. The old house is shut up." Adrian was silent for a moment. "Poor old fellow!" he said at last. "I'm very sorry to hear it. And the house shut up--of course Miss Strange would go back to her people in Devonshire." Reynold looked at him silently. "I wonder who will take the old Place!" said Adrian. "If I were rich--" Their glances met once more, and he stopped short, and strolled towards the window. "A castle in the air," he said, presently. "I don't suppose I shall ever see Mitchelhurst again, since the poor old gentleman is gone. But I shall always remember the place. Not for its beauty, precisely. I know when I went there first I was surprised that he should care to live in a corner of that great white pile. Something rather sepulchral about it. Did you ever notice it by moonlight?" Reynold Harding said, Yes, he had. "I recollect an almost startling effect one night," Scarlett continued. "And the avenue too--that queer avenue--gnarled boughs, with thin foliage quivering in the wind, and glimpses of summer sky shining through. I think if I were a painter I would make a picture of those trees." There _was_ a picture of them, stripped of their leaves, and wrestling with an October gale, before the eyes of the man to whom he spoke. "They might be worth painting," he said. "I suppose they weren't worth cutting down. If they had been, I fancy there wouldn't be any avenue left."