So saying she led me to an immense upper chamber, with a gilt bedstead hung with watchet blue. Grotesque lacquered cabinets lined the walls, and in each corner stood a dark-green monster from Nankin. Here I made a few hasty alterations in my toilet, and after slipping a spray of honeysuckle from a bowl on the dressing-table into my button-hole I hurried down to the drawing-room. Mary sat within; her knees covered by a long piece of lawn which she was embroidering. It fell to the floor and she turned very pale as I entered. ‘Cousin Mary,’ I said reproachfully, ‘why do you treat me so coldly? Have I offended you?’ Her eyes were slowly lifted to mine, and I beheld in them, despite her timidity, a look of the keenest pleasure. She held out her hand tentatively, and seemed relieved when I grasped it. ‘I am sorry that you should have misunderstood me,’ she murmured. ‘The anticipation of this meeting has been so painful. I am not as strong as Rachel, and anything disconcerts me.’ Rachel’s entrance prevented any further remarks. She had taken advantage of the short time to doff her yellow gown for one of pale green gauze, of the same hue as the sea where the sunlight falls over shallows. A pair of fancifully worked gloves were fastened to her girdle: they were made of a claret-coloured, semi-transparent skin. With a laughing reminder of the ceremony we had used as boy and girl at our first meeting, she accompanied me to the table, where the meal passed in delicious interchange of thought, during which, although Mary neither spoke nor seemed to listen I could well understand that she was appreciative. When I returned to the drawing-room Rachel’s look was mischievous: Mary had evidently been reproving her. ‘You shall judge me, Rafe,’ she cried, holding up her hands so that I might see what she had done. The gloves she had worn at her belt covered them now. They were awkwardly made, and on the back of each was worked a silk picture of a dagger and a vial. ‘They are tragic accompaniments,’ she said. ‘Mary has been scolding me for wearing them--she declares that they will bring me ill luck. Do you believe in such nonsense?’ She did not wait for my reply, but continued: ‘They were made of the skin of a murderess gibbeted in these parts a hundred and twenty years ago. Old Barnard Verelst insisted on having a piece: he wanted to cover a book with it, but his wife, whom tradition reports as a real she-devil, insisted on having these gloves instead. Between ourselves, the result was that she poisoned her lord, but as he was very old, nobody was much the worse.’