"What have looks to do with it? There's many a false heart beneath a fair-seeming face. Aye, many--many." He spoke the last words as if to himself, and when he had ended he sat staring out of the window like one who had become suddenly oblivious of everything around him. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. Mr. Denison's reverie was broken by the entrance of Aaron with letters and newspapers. Then the Squire turned to Conroy. "So you're not a spy, eh? Well, I don't know that you look like one. But pray what can there be about a musty tumble-down old house, like this, that you should want to make a sketch of it?" "The Denisons are one of the oldest families in Norfolk. Surely, sir, some account of the home of such a family would interest many people." "And how come you to know so much about the Denisons?" shrewdly asked the Squire. "But sit down. It worries me to see people standing at my elbow." "Such knowledge is a part of my stock-in-trade," said Conroy, as he took a chair. "I have not only to make the sketches, but to tell the public all about them. Both in Burke and the 'County History' I have found many interesting particulars of the old family whose home is at Heron Dyke." "So--so! And pray, young sir, what other houses in the county have you sketched before you found your way here?" "None; I have come to you, sir, before going anywhere else." "Well said, young man. The county can boast of finer houses by the score, but what are the families who live in them? Mushrooms--mere mushrooms in comparison with the Denisons. We might have been ennobled centuries ago had we chosen to accept a title. But the Denisons always thought themselves above such gewgaws." "Was it not to the same purport, sir, that Colonel Denison answered James the Second when his Majesty offered him a patent of nobility on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne?" "Ah--ha! your reading has been to some purpose," said the old man, with a dry chuckle. "That's the colonel's portrait over there in the left-hand corner. They used to tell me that I was something like him when I was a young spark." Evidently he was pleased. He rubbed his lean, chilly fingers together, and fell into another reverie. Conroy glanced round. Ella was sitting at her little work-table busy with her crewels. What a sweet picture she made in the young man's eyes as she sat there in her grey dress, with the rich coils of her chestnut hair bound closely round her head, and an agate locket set in gold suspended from her neck by a ribbon, in which was a portrait of her dead mother. Not knowing that Conroy was gazing at her, her eyes glanced up from her work and encountered his. Next moment the long lashes hid them again, but the sweet carnation in her cheeks betrayed that she had been taken unawares.