"This way, mum--please to follow me," and desiring their driver to await them, Constance and Sybil entered the mansion of Rhoscadzhel. As if to tantalise them by a display of all they were perhaps to lose, or had already lost for ever, a valet, to whose care Mr. Funnel now consigned them, conducted them by a somewhat circuitous route, as all the suites of rooms were not in order, the family having arrived unexpectedly from town. Passing through the marble vestibule, an arch on one side of which opened to a gay aviary, and one on the other to the beautiful conservatory, they entered a long and lofty corridor, where the soft carpet muffled every foot-fall, and where were the objects of _vertu_, accumulated by several generations of Trevelyans; a veritable museum it seemed, of glass cases filled with quaintly illuminated vellum MSS., in fine old Roman bindings, red-edged and clasped; old laces of Malines and Bruges; Chinese ivory carvings, delicate as gossamer webs; Burmese idols; Japanese cabinets, covered with flaming dragons; Majolica vases, where rosy cupids, grotesque tritons, nude nymphs, and shining dolphins, were all grouped together; Delft hardware of odd designs; Etruscan cups, cream-coloured or crimson, with slender black demoniac figures thereon; mediæval suits of armour; family portraits of dames in ruffs and farthingales, and of past Trevelyans, all well-wigged, cuirassed, and armed: some with Bardolph noses and paunches of comely curve, suggestive of sack and venison; the chiefs of these being Lord Henry, who was Governor of Rougemont Castle for Queen Elizabeth, and Launcelot, the cavalier-lord, who sought shelter in Trewoofe from the victorious Roundheads. The refined and cultivated taste of Constance could well appreciate all these objects; but now, as one in a dream, her eyes wandered over those walls where many a gem of art was hanging; the soft-eyed and white-skinned girls of Greuze; the bearded and doubleted nobles of Vandyke; cattle, fat and lazy-looking, by Cuyp; hazy sea-pieces by Turner, and more than one lovely Raphael; but then her every thought was turned inward; and as if to support herself, she retained Sybil's tremulous little hand, on which her clasp tightened, as the servant, who was clad in mourning livery, with a black cord aiguilette on each shoulder, opened noiselessly the half of a folding-door, and ushered them into that splendid library where her husband had found his proud old uncle dead at the writing-table, and Downie (with the unsigned deed) hanging over him, with confusion and disappointment on his usually stolid visage. "Visitors, my lord," said the servant. And to add to the perplexity of Constance, she found herself face to face with the whole family group--the whole, at least, save one, her nephew Audley. CHAPTER XXI. HUMILIATION.