She showed me into a room and closed the door, and in the course of the next few minutes I came to one or two pretty obvious conclusions. She was clearly Mr. Rendall's daughter, and they were equally clearly in the habit of receiving visits at odd times from Mr. O'Brien; in fact they evidently concluded it was he, or Miss Rendall herself would scarcely have opened the door to me. Also, her reply might be taken as implying that if Mr. O'Brien had been the visitor, it would not have been her father he had come to see. But whether or no this were the true interpretation, I so thoroughly disliked and suspected O'Brien that any suggestion of intimacy was alone enough to make me glad I had started on the defensive. "Otherwise," said I to myself, "what a charming girl to find in such a place!" However, I reminded myself that I had not come here to be charmed, and proceeded next to take stock of the room. It was not large, but pleasantly proportioned, low in the ceiling, and pervaded with a delicate yet distinct flavour of the past, I found myself instinctively wondering how one could reproduce this particular flavour on the stage; no armour or tapestry or any of the usual antique paraphernalia to be allowed, for beyond the thick walls and rather small windows, it was so difficult to lay one's finger on any one specific thing that palpably suggested age. Finally I decided that it was impossible to re-create such an atmosphere. It was compounded of stillness within and the glimpses of primeval quiet without, of a touch of comfortable shabbiness, of plenty of elderly books, and of a faint odour of the dampness of centuries mingled with the scent of honeysuckle. My suspicions were suddenly lulled, and with that prompt decision which has landed me in and pulled me out of so many holes, I decided to drop my German accent. That the charming Miss Rendall might miss it, and wonder what had become of it, was (I must confess) a reflection which did not occur to me till afterwards.