"And, lawfully," said Gwen, "Mrs. Fitzherbert was his legal wife. Nothing can be clearer. Yes--I should say certainly call the big room Mrs. Fitzherbert. Whom shall you call the other rooms after, Clo?" "All the others. There's any number! Mrs. Robinson, Lady Jersey, Lady Conyngham ... one for every room in the house, and several over. Just fancy!--the room has never been altered, since those days. It was polished up for my poor mother--whom no doubt I saw in my youth, but took no notice of. You see, I wasn't of an age to take notice, when she departed to Kingdom-come, and my father exiled himself to Scotland...." "And he kept it packed up like this--how long?" "Well--you know how old I am. Twenty-seven." Aunt Constance corrected dates. "George the Fourth," said she chronologically, "ascended the throne in 1820. Consequently he cannot have become intoxicated in this room...." Sister Nora interrupted. Of course he couldn't--not in her father's time. The cards and dice were going in her great-uncle's time, who drank himself to death forty years ago. "There used to be some packs of cards," said she, "in one of these drawers. I know I saw some there, only it's a long time back--almost the only time I ever came into the room. I'll look.... Take care of the dust!" It was lucky that the cabinet-maker who framed that inlaid table knew his business--they did, in his day--or the rounded front might have called for a jerk, instead of giving easily to the pull it had awaited so patiently, through decades. "There they are!" said Gwen, "with nobody to deal them. Poor cards--locked up in the dark all these years! Do let's have them out and play dummy to-night." A spirit of Conservatism suggested that it would be impious to disturb a _status quo_ connected with Royalty. But Gwen said, touching a visible ace:--"Just think, Clo, if _you_ were an ace, and had a chance of being trumps, how would you like to be shut up in a drawer again?" This appeal to our common humanity had its effect, and a couple of packs were brought out for use. No language could describe the penetrating powers of the dust that accompanied their return to active duties. It ended the visit _en passant_ of these three ladies, who were not sorry to find themselves in an upstairs suite of rooms with a kitchen and a miniature household, just established regardless of expense. Because three hundred a year was what Miss Grahame was "going to" live upon, as soon as she had "had time to turn round," and for the moment it was absurd to draw hard and fast lines. Just wait and give her time, to get a little settled!