Where was she? The early winter afternoon was drawing to a close, and every object around her was beginning to be shrouded by the snow-footed twilight stealing in from without. Great chests bound with bands of tarnished steel lined the vast oval chamber where she stood; ancient oaken benches, worm-eaten and scarred with age, were stiffly ranged along the four gaunt sides of a ponderous table; the windows were uncurtained, excepting by rigid lambrequins covering only the upper portion of them as they might have a catafalque. Laurence shudderingly took in all this, and her teeth began to chatter, not from cold only--though it was intensely cold there, where the benefits of hot-water pipes, or even of stoves or open fires, were non-existent--but from fear and apprehension carried to their highest degree. “The muniment-room,” she whispered to herself. Basil had spoken of it once, but she had never come there, so incurious was she about the past of a race she cared nothing for, excepting in so far as it concerned her own present High-Mightiness and colossal wealth. Twice she tried to steady her trembling limbs--she knew she must go back to her own apartments before she fainted--twice she failed, clutching convulsively at the top of the nearest chest for support, and it was only after five minutes of strained effort that she succeeded in dragging herself away, step by shaking step. What she had at first taken for a niche in the wall opened before her like a crafty eye, revealing a winding stair in the thickness of the masonry, dusty, gloom-filled, and spider-webbed. Had she unconsciously climbed to an upper floor, she questioned herself, or was she still on a level with her own rooms? She did not know, nor had she any means of finding out, especially in her present state of semi-collapse, so she fearfully recrossed the muniment-room and glanced down a straight, narrow gallery which she could not recall having traversed. Night was creeping on so rapidly now that once more terror shook her, and sooner than try that way she summoned her remaining strength, and, going back once more, after a moment’s hesitation whether to follow the gut-like spiral up or down, she commenced to descend the narrow steps. It must be in a tower, she hazily realized, since there it was a trifle lighter, owing to the thickly glazed _meurtrières_, which reappeared at each successive winding of the interminable flight. Would she ever reach the bottom? Mechanically she began to count them one by one, lost the sequence, and at length found herself stranded in a square hall that smelled of mould and ancient damp. A faint gray light showed beyond an arched doorway on the other side, and toward this she walked, dragging her mauve velvets in the sodden grime, for even the weight of her train had grown to be too much for her. Another minute or so and she was in a high-vaulted passage, opening far down an endless perspective of