Thence, his judgment reinforced, his gaze swept back to Isabel. There it was all just wrong: criticism could run riot; there, incarnate, was the second-rate. Second-rate? Blind instinct protested, and pointed the way to a discovery. Isabel was not second-rate. By every rule she should have been, but second-rate she was not. Strangely, unaccountably not. The rules in this case seemed to have collapsed. There, at all events, was everything that normally makes up the second-rate--cheapness, tawdriness, untidiness. But these items could not be added up to make the expected total. He hated his consciousness that in her was something--something that he recognised almost as an old friend--character, enthusiasm, whatever it was, that exempted her from ordinary rules. And, as he chafed against himself for not being able to pass the whole-hearted condemnation that his fastidiousness clamoured for, so he doubly chafed against the mystery in her that imposed so illogical, so unreasonable a limitation on his judgment, and forced him to feel, in what all the laws of taste denounced, a monstrous, fantastic fascination that defied analysis and resistance. ‘So nice,’ he heard Gundred saying; ‘and then you will go with us to Ivescar, I hope--our place in Yorkshire. I have never been there yet, of course, so you and I will have great fun exploring it--yes?’ ‘Too glorious for words!’ cried Isabel irrelevantly, her eyes roaming eagerly from wall to wall of the little low room. ‘I have never dreamt of a fairy-palace like this. That panelling! Oh, it’s too precious. And the beautiful dim dustiness of it all! One feels as if one were trespassing on the domain of ghosts. These tiny, crazy, oaken parlours--they must be simply soaked with memories.’ ‘Nice little rooms--yes?’ said Gundred complacently, contriving to reprove such undisciplined enthusiasm by the very gentleness with which she accepted it. ‘Dusty’ did not seem to her at all a fitting compliment to pay the oldest wing of Brakelond. She was certain that the housemaids discharged their duty perfectly. ‘Nice!’ cried Isabel ardently; ‘what a ridiculous word! They are the haunt of dead centuries. Don’t you feel either primeval or irreverent every time you drink a cup of tea here?’ ‘Oh no,’ replied Gundred mildly. ‘I hope I should never have such dreadful feelings anywhere, and the rooms are really quite convenient. The only thing is that they are so cut off from the rest of the Castle. You’ll see to-morrow. This wing stands right away from the rest of the building, on a spur of rock that drops straight into the sea. They are all wood, these rooms--the oldest part of Brakelond.’ ‘I know I thought I had walked miles before we got here,’ replied Isabel--‘miles, through the most fascinating dreadful dark halls and passages, just like the dim labyrinths in a Maeterlinck Castle.’