Yet she had not been mistaken. Any one in the road that night might have seen a light ascending past the windows of the staircase and then moving through the upper rooms, until at last in one it remained for a long time. The light was carried by Diana Royle. She passed up the staircase to an unfurnished room used for the storage of old boxes and discarded things. From the corner of this room she rolled out a great bale, dusty with years, and tied up like a carpet with an old piece of rope. She cut the rope and spread it out upon the floor, cautiously and silently. Then lowering her candle she examined it. With a smile upon her lips she stood up again. She fastened the bale and dragged it back into its corner. The smile did not leave her lips. Chance had led her up here some weeks ago. She had discovered the bale and had wondered what it was. An old carpet? A disused curtain? Now she knew. In an attic of this old house she had discovered the lost strip of the Ludsey tapestry. CHAPTER XVII A REFUSAL "So you have refused young Helmsdale." Three months had passed since the Ludsey election. The air was warm and golden and already the world whispered of summer, yet not too loud lest it should seem to boast and so be balked of its desire. Parliament had met, London was full, and in the country the foxes and the pheasants had leisure to attend to their own affairs. And with the rest Cynthia had come to town. She rode on this morning out of the park, where the buds were running along the branches of the trees like delicate green flames, about eleven o'clock, and turning out of South Audley Street into Curzon Street, she saw Mr. Benoliel waiting upon the pavement in front of her new house. As she stopped her horse before the door he reprimanded her: "Cynthia, you have refused him." Cynthia blushed. Then she exclaimed: "But how in the world could you know! It isn't half an hour since I refused him." Then she bent down over her saddle and gazed at him in the fulness of admiration. "But you know everything. It wouldn't be of much use trying to keep things from you, would it?" Mr. Benoliel smiled grimly. "Yes, that's the way, Cynthia, and no doubt a neater style of doing it will come in time." Cynthia sat upright, swift as a spring, and remained so, with her nose in the air, haughty for five complete seconds. Then curiosity restored her to her sex and she swooped again over her saddle. "How did you know?" "He borrowed a horse from me this morning," said Mr. Benoliel--"a good horse. He was very particular that it should be a valuable horse. So I gathered that he wanted to make on this morning of all mornings a specially favorable impression." Cynthia's lips twitched. "You lent him a very good horse," she said. "But the horse didn't tell you."