The Squire flung his bridle to a groom who had been hanging about the drive watching for his master's return, and stalked into the stately old hall, panelled with age-blackened oak, adorned with many trophies of the battle-field and the chase, and further embellished with the portraits of Mr. Bosworth's ancestors, which he valued less than the canvas upon which they were painted. He was as proud as Lucifer, but his was not that kind of pride which fattens itself, ghoul-like, upon the dead. The captains and learned judges looming from those dark walls were to him the most worthless of all shadows. The hall was spacious and gloomy, and opened into a still more spacious dining-room, where the Squire had never eaten a dinner since he came of age. A noble saloon or music-room, painted white, and furnished exactly as it had been in the days of Charles II., opened on the other side of the hall; but the only apartments which the Squire occupied on this ground floor were three small rooms at the end of a long passage, which served him as dining-room, study, and office. A steep narrow little staircase built in the wall, which stair had once been a secret means of communication between upper and lower stories, conducted to the Squire's bedchamber and dressing-room. His child and her nurse had their abode in the opposite wing; and thus all the state rooms, constituting the centre and main body of the house, were given over to emptiness. The establishment was on the smallest scale. There were less than half a dozen servants where there had once been twenty. No portly powdered footman came to Mr. Bosworth's summons, but a little old man in a very shabby livery shambled along the passage at the sound of his master's bell. "Has there been a child brought here?" "Yes, sir." "Good. Send Mrs. Layburne here." The man shambled out again. The Squire flung off hat and riding-gloves, and seated himself by his solitary hearth. There were some logs smouldering there, for the September mornings were cool, and the Squire was of a chilly temper. The table was laid for a frugal breakfast of tea and toast; not by any means the kind of meal which would have satisfied the average country gentleman of that era; a scrivener's or a garreteer's breakfast rather. The Squire poured himself out a cup of tea, and sat sipping it with an absent stir, and his eye upon the door. It was flung open abruptly, and a woman entered, tall, with noble neck and shoulders, and the carriage of Dido herself--a magnificent ruin. No one could doubt that the creature had once been eminently beautiful; there were traces still of those vanished charms: eyes of velvety brown, full, fiery, splendid, and the outline of fine features. But the skin was withered and yellow, the raven hair was grizzled, some of the teeth had gone, and nose and chin had both become too prominent. The queen had degenerated into the hag.