Harborough followed the old butler inside the house, and through the ancient stone hall, ornamented with deers’ antlers, foxes’ masks, old muskets, and other trophies of the chase and of country life, to a room which he remembered well enough—one which the family now used as a usual gathering-place. There was a bright fire of logs in the hearth; Braxfield pulled up a chair to it. “Never use the drawing-room nowadays, Mr. Harborough,” he whispered confidentially. “This room does for everything—dining-room, sitting-room, and so on. Not as well off as we used to be, sir—eh? But—we’ve still a glass of rare good port wine for old friends! Can I get you anything, Mr. Harborough?—say the word, sir!” “Nothing, nothing, Braxfield, thank you,” replied Harborough. He looked round and nodded at various objects. “I remember it all,” he murmured. “Nothing changed! Well, tell the young folks I’m here, Braxfield.” He stood up by the mantelpiece—a heavily-built, finely-carved piece of old oak—when the butler had gone, and looked once more round the room. He had known that room when he was a boy, nearly thirty years before: it was then the breakfast and morning-room, and the most comfortable place in the big, rambling house. It was comfortable now, with its old furniture, old pictures, old books—everything in it suggested the antiquity of the family to whom it belonged. But in spite of the comfort, homely and sufficient, Harborough’s sharp eyes and acute perceptions noticed an atmosphere which he summed up in one word, Decay!—its evidences were all around him. Everything was wearing out, slowly, no doubt, but surely. He looked up suddenly from the threadbare carpet on which he stood to see the door open, and a girl enter and come towards him with outstretched hand—a tall, lissome-figured girl, dark as all the Markenmores were, handsome, and somehow, in a way he could not immediately define, suggestive of life and spirit. She was a young beauty, and her freshness was all the more striking in those ancient surroundings: it struck Harborough so much, indeed, that he became tongue-tied, and held her hand and stared incredulously at her for a full minute before he found a word. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed at last, looking down at her, tall as she was, from his six-foot-two of feet and inches-. “Are—are you Valencia?” “Nobody else—that I’m aware of!” she answered, with a laugh. “Didn’t you know me? I knew you.” “Ah!” said Harborough. “I was already an oldish sort of chap when I went away!—nearly thirty. But you, then, you were——” “Thirteen,” she broke in, with another laugh. “All legs and wings, I suppose. And so you have really come home again?” She pointed to a chair, dropping into one herself, and Harborough sat down too, and continued to look at her, still marvelling that what he remembered as a somewhat plain and awkward child should have been transformed into this bright young creature.