verted to see her glance at him as if she suspected he must be joking.
He followed her across the piazza and down a wide, dust-disturbed hall, from which gaping doors gave on wide, dust-disturbed, dismantled drawing-rooms; across a high and glaring dining-room, with turrets of chairs tottering on the glassy tables, and out into a hall, dark after the long spaces of white, pine walls and glistening floors, narrow, used and old, with windows looking direct into the trees, and an unruffled air smelling faintly of the forest. Several doors opened from here, some white, worn almost to the wood, others freshly painted, but all of the same design, rather low, narrow-paneled and with eyebrows of cut woodwork. A staircase clambered between two walls, and up this the proprietress led him, across another hall, and with the flinging open of a door, he found himself presented to a large room, with windows thinly veiled in muslin, and looking abruptly into the pines. The light which sifted through their branches came pale and greenish like light through water. The yellow reflection of a wood fire darted along the floor.
"There's a bath-room through that door, the one on the right," his conductress said, indicating with a wave of her hand; "and if you will leave your boots and things outside I'll see they are cleaned
20
