She merely nodded. But Mrs Wilson looked very sharply, first at the one, then at the other of us. When we reached the library, I found it in the same miserable condition as before, and could not help exclaiming with some indignation, ‘It _is_ a shame to see such treasures mouldering there! I am confident there are many valuable books among them, getting ruined from pure neglect. I wish I knew Sir Giles. I would ask him to let me come and set them right.’ ‘You would be choked with dust and cobwebs in an hour’s time,’ said Clara. ‘Besides, I don’t think Mrs Wilson would like the proceeding.’ ‘What do you ground that remark upon, Miss Clara?’ said the housekeeper in a dry tone. ‘I thought you used them for firewood occasionally,’ answered Clara, with an innocent expression both of manner and voice. The most prudent answer to such an absurd charge would have been a laugh; but Mrs Wilson vouchsafed no reply at all, and I pretended to be too much occupied with its subject to have heard it. After lingering a little while, during which I paid attention chiefly to Mrs Wilson, drawing her notice to the state of several of the books, I proposed we should have a peep at the armoury. We went in, and, glancing over the walls I knew so well, I scarcely repressed an exclamation: I could not be mistaken in my own sword! There it hung, in the centre of the principal space--in the same old sheath, split half-way up from the point! To the hilt hung an ivory label with a number upon it. I suppose I made some inarticulate sound, for Clara fixed her eyes upon me. I busied myself at once with a gorgeously hiked scimitar, which hung near, for I did not wish to talk about it then, and so escaped further remark. From the armoury we went to the picture-gallery, where I found a good many pictures had been added to the collection. They were all new and mostly brilliant in colour. I was no judge, but I could not help feeling how crude and harsh they looked beside the mellowed tints of the paintings, chiefly portraits, among which they had been introduced. ‘Horrid!--aren’t they?’ said Clara, as if she divined my thoughts; but I made no direct reply, unwilling to offend Mrs Wilson. When we were once more on horseback, and walking across the grass, my companion was the first to speak. ‘Did you ever see such daubs!’ she said, making a wry face as at something sour enough to untune her nerves. ‘Those new pictures are simply frightful. Any one of them would give me the jaundice in a week, if it were hung in our drawing-room.’ ‘I can’t say I admire them,’ I returned. ‘And at all events they ought not to be on the same walls with those stately old ladies and gentlemen.’ ‘Parvenus,’ said Clara. ‘Quite in their place. Pure Manchester taste--educated on calico-prints.’ ‘If that is your opinion of the family, how do you account for their keeping everything so much in the old style? They don’t seem to change anything.’