They were sitting out, all three, in the small square garden. The day was sultry and mysterious, with curling heavy masses of white and fawn-coloured cloud towering high over the rim of a pallid sea. Behind, the mass of the Castle was of a bronzy-rose in the strange light, dreamlike and splendid. In bed and border no flower stirred, and the scent of roses rose straight into the leaden air like so many spires of faint invisible smoke. They sat looking out towards the edge of the world, the unwavering dim line of water that stretched beyond the old wing of King Mark’s Chapel. Above all the rest of the Castle Isabel loved to look at that old haphazard rickle of rooms, that crazy hive of long-dead activities, which stood out from the rest of the building on its defiant promontory over the sea. It was a little barnacle, growing off the hulk of Brakelond, and attached only by the slender stalk of one narrow passage, at whose outer end was its cluster of buildings, the low squat chapel, then the rooms where Kingston, Gundred, and Isabel had their dwelling, and, above, a second story, a series of low rooms at present uninhabited. ‘Ivescar?’ said Isabel. ‘Ivescar--oh yes, thank you very much, Gundred. I shall be ever so pleased to go to Ivescar. Oh, those little rooms of ours are too delicious for words. And there’s no ivy too; that would make them conventional. I love them. I don’t think the Castle does, though. They seem too proud to belong to it. They keep themselves to themselves. The ghosts are happier there than in the big tower. My room was simply crammed with them, Gundred. All last night they hovered about.’ ‘You don’t say so!’ exclaimed Gundred. ‘How dreadfully inconvenient! I do hope they did not keep you awake, dear. Do you really believe in them? Surely not--no? One believes that God would never allow such things. Anyhow, we must be very careful not to let the servants hear about them, or all the housemaids will be giving notice. But I was talking about Ivescar. We thought of going there in quite a few days now. The summer is getting on, and Kingston wants to show me to all our people there--tenants and so forth. One feels it rather one’s duty--yes?’ ‘Ivescar?’ repeated Isabel; ‘I don’t think I am very much interested in Ivescar, am I? Of course, I am looking forward to going there. But it cannot be anything like this. And I belong here. I am sure I do. It is not anything like this, Gundred?’ ‘Oh, dear me, no, of course not. There isn’t anything like this anywhere. Ivescar is just a nice modern place, large and comfortable, but quite modern. I haven’t been there yet, but Kingston has told me all about it. His father bought it, estate and all, when he married--didn’t he, Kingston?’