There was not much more to be seen. A little wooden stair-case led from the second library to the upper rooms, curious old rooms, which had been annexed one by one as the Squire wanted them, and in which there was nothing at all--neither chair, nor table, nor carpet--but books only. All the doors leading from room to room had been taken off; the old worm-eaten boards had been roughly stained; a few old French engravings had been hung here and there where the encroaching books left an opening; but otherwise all was bare. There was a curious charm in the space and air of these empty rooms, with their latticed windows opening on to the hill, and letting in day by day the summer sun-risings or the winter dawns, which had shone upon them for more than three centuries. ‘This is my last day of privilege,’ said Robert. ‘Everybody is shut out when once he appears, from this wing, and this part of the grounds. This was his father’s room,’ and the Rector led the way into the last of the series; ‘and through there,’ pointing to a door on the right, ‘lies the way to his own sleeping-room, which is of course connected with the more modern side of the house.’ ‘So this is where that old man ventured “what Cato did and Addison approved,” murmured Langham, standing in the middle of the room and looking around him. This particular room was now used as a sort of lumber place, a receptacle for the superfluous or useless books, gradually thrown off by the great collection all around. There were innumerable volumes in frayed or broken bindings lying on the ground. A musty smell hung over it all; the gray light from outside, which seemed to give only an added subtlety and charm, to the other portions of the ancient building through which they had been moving, seemed here _triste_ and dreary. Or Langham fancied it. He passed the threshold again with a little sigh, and saw suddenly before him at the end of the suite of rooms, and framed in the doorways facing him, an engraving of a Greuze picture--a girl’s face turned over her shoulder, the hair waving about her temples, the lips parted, the teeth gleaming mirth and provocation and tender yielding in every line. Langham started, and the blood rushed to his heart. It was as though Rose herself stood there and beckoned to him. CHAPTER XV.