After which Edith retired, weary and worn out, and troubled in many ways. * * * * * CHAPTER VI. WALLED IN. Very early on the following day Edith arose, and found Mrs. Dunbar already moving about. She remarked that she had heard Edith dressing herself, and had prepared a breakfast for her. This little mark of attention was very grateful to Edith, who thanked Mrs. Dunbar quite earnestly, and found the repast a refreshing one. After this, as it was yet too early to think of calling on Miss Plympton, she wandered about the house. The old nooks and corners dear to memory were visited once more. Familiar scenes came back before her. Here was the nursery, there her mother's room, in another place the library. There, too, was the great hall up stairs, with pictures on each side of ancestors who went back to the days of the Plantagenets. There were effigies in armor of knights who had fought in the Crusades and in the Wars of the Roses; of cavaliers who had fought for King Charles; of gallant gentlemen who had followed their country's flag under the burning sun of India, over the sierras of Spain, and in the wilderness of America. And of all these she was the last, and all that ancestral glory was bound up in her, a weak and fragile girl. Deeply she regretted at that moment that she was not a man, so that she might confer new lustre upon so exalted a lineage. [Illustration: “SHE SAW THE BLACK SERVANT, HUGO.”] As she wandered through the rooms and galleries all her childhood came back before her. She recalled her mother, her fond love, and her early death. That mother's picture hung in the great hall, and she gazed at it long and pensively, recalling that noble face, which in her remembrance was always softened by the sweet expression of tenderest love. But it was here that something met her eyes which in a moment chased away every regretful thought and softer feeling, and brought back in fresh vehemence the strong glow of her grief and indignation. Turning away from her mother's portrait by a natural impulse to look for that of her father, she was at first unable to find it. At length, at the end of the line of Dalton portraits, she noticed what at first she had supposed to be part of the wall out of repair. Another glance, however, showed that it was the back of a picture. In a moment she understood it. It was her father's portrait, and the face had been turned to the wall.