Katherine was frankly awed. Blissington was a very fine gentleman's house--but this was a palace. And suddenly, the Duke seemed a million miles away from her, and she wondered how she had ever dared to be familiar with him, and rebuke him for coming to her schoolroom to talk! She was meek as a mouse, and never opened her lips after the first words of greeting. The host had come forward with cordial graciousness and bidden them welcome, and he had looked a very magnificent person somehow in his morning country riding clothes. And all the glamour of high rank and power and fastidiousness enhanced his natural charms, so that Katherine felt a little cold and sick with the emotion which she was experiencing. He was courtly and aloof in his manner with all his kindness, and in a moment or two he accompanied them along to the Venetian suite himself. "I must come, dear friend," he had said to Lady Garribardine, "to be sure that you have everything you can possibly want." The Venetian suite was on a par in splendour with the rest of the house. It was on the same floor as His Grace's own sitting-room which they had left, and it was reached by a passage place which led to the same terrace, which the windows looked upon; this was marble paved, with a splendid balustrade. The ante-chamber had been arranged with a writing table near the great window, and every convenience for Miss Bush to do any writing her mistress might require. For the rest, the Venetian suite was always reserved for the most honoured guest. Here were a sitting-room, a great bedroom and dressing-room for Her Ladyship--all with the same lofty ceilings and fine windows as the room they had left, and behind it came that charming green damask-hung chamber designed for Miss Bush. "Here in this apartment you will find yourselves completely quiet and shut off from the world," the Duke said. "Once you have passed the great door, as you know, Seraphim, your suite makes the end of this wing, and only I can approach you from my sitting-room!" Lady Garribardine, who knew every nook in the house, smiled as she expressed herself as content, and he left them alone. Katherine examined her room; it would have struck her as very large if it had been in any other house. It looked on to an inner courtyard with a fountain playing, and statuary and hundred-year-old lilac bushes in huge tubs. The room was hung with pale green silk, and had beautiful painted Italian, eighteenth century furniture, and on the dressing-table were bowls of lilies of the valley. She thrilled a little; was this accidental or deliberate?