I interrupt my narrative to mention the odd fact that so fully was my mind possessed with the antiquity of the place, which it had been the pride of generation after generation to keep up, that now, when I recall the scene, the guests always appear dressed not as they were then, but in a far more antique style with which after knowledge supplied my inner vision. Last of all came Lady Brotherton, Sir Giles’s wife, a pale, delicate-looking woman, leaning on the arm of a tall, long-necked, would-be-stately, yet insignificant-looking man. She gave a shiver as, up the steps from the warm drawing-room, she came at once opposite our open door. ‘What a draught there is here!’ she said, adjusting her rose-coloured scarf about her shoulders. ‘It feels quite wintry. Will you oblige me, Mr Mellon, by shutting that door? Sir Giles will not allow me to have it built up. I am sure there are plenty of ways to the leads besides that.’ ‘This door, my lady?’ asked Mr Mellon. I trembled lest he should see us. ‘Yes. Just throw it to. There’s a spring lock on it. I can’t think--’ The slam and echoing bang of the closing door cut off the end of the sentence. Even Clara was a little frightened, for her hand stole into mine for a moment before she burst out laughing. ‘Hush! hush!’ I said. ‘They will hear you.’ ‘I almost wish they would,’ she said. ‘What a goose I was to be frightened, and not speak! Do you know where we are?’ ‘No,’ I answered; ‘how should I? Where are we?’ My fancy of knowing the place had vanished utterly by this time. All my mental charts of it had got thoroughly confused, and I do not believe I could have even found my way back to the library. ‘Shut out on the leads,’ she answered. ‘Come along. We may as well go to meet our fate.’ I confess to a little palpitation of the heart as she spoke, for I was not yet old enough to feel that Clara’s companionship made the doom a light one. Up the stairs we went--here no twisting corkscrew, but a broad flight enough, with square turnings. At the top was a door, fastened only with a bolt inside--against no worse housebreakers than the winds and rains. When we emerged, we found ourselves in the open night. ‘Here we are in the moon’s drawing-room!’ said Clara. The scene was lovely. The sky was all now--the earth only a background or pedestal for the heavens. The river, far below, shone here and there in answer to the moon, while the meadows and fields lay as in the oblivion of sleep, and the wooded hills were only dark formless masses. But the sky was the dwelling-place of the moon, before whose radiance, penetratingly still, the stars shrunk as if they would hide in the flowing skirts of her garments. There was scarce a cloud to be seen, and the whiteness of the moon made the blue thin. I could hardly believe in what I saw. It was as if I had come awake without getting out of the dream.