With the beginning of August there came a change in the weather. High winds, gloom, and rain succeeded that brilliant cloudless summer-time, which had become, as it were, the normal condition of the universe; and Lady Laura's guests were fain to abandon their picnics and forest excursions, their botanical researches and distant race-meetings--nay, even croquet itself, that perennial source of recreation for the youthful mind, had to be given up, except in the most fitful snatches. In this state of things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was a charmingly composite apartment--having one long wall lined with bookshelves, sacred to the most frivolous ephemeral literature, and a grand piano in an arched recess at one end of the room--and in wet weather was the chosen resort of every socially-disposed guest at Hale. Here Clarissa learned to elevate her pretty little hand into the approved form of bridge, and acquired some acquaintance with the mysteries of cannons and pockets. It was Mr. Fairfax who taught her billiards. Lady Geraldine dropped into the room now and then, and played a game in a dashing off-hand way with her lover, amidst the admiring comments of her friends; but she did not come very often, and Mr. Fairfax had plenty of time for Clarissa's instruction. Upon one of these wet days he insisted upon looking over her portfolio of drawings; and in going through a heap of careless sketches they came upon something of her brother Austin's. They were sitting in the library,--a very solemn and splendid chamber, with a carved oak roof and deep mullioned windows,--a room that was less used than any other apartment in the Castle. Mr. Fairfax had caught Miss Lovel here, with her portfolio open on the table before her, copying a drawing of Piranesi's; so there could be no better opportunity for inspecting the sketches, which she had hitherto refused to show him. That sketch of Austin's--a group of Arab horsemen done in pen and ink--set them talking about him at once; and George Fairfax told Clarissa all he could tell about his intercourse with her brother.