There is something threatening in the sky,
and the earth seems to know it!"

"But the room! the room! " said Leonard,
drawing her aside from the window. "Never
mind the view; tell me what the room is
like, exactly what it is like. I shall not feel
easy about you, Rosamond, if you don't
describe everything to me just as it is."

"My darling! You know you can depend
on my describing everything. I am only
doubting where to begin, and how to make
sure of seeing for you, what you are likely
to think most worth looking at. Here is an
old ottoman against the wall—the wall where
the window is. I will take off my apron,
and dust the seat for, you; and then you can
sit down, and listen comfortably, while I tell
you, before we think of anything else, what
the room is like, to begin with. First of all,
I suppose, I must make you understand how
large it is?"

"Yes, that is the first thing. Try if you
can compare it with any room that I was
familiar with, before I lost my sight."

Rosamond looked backwards and forwards,
from wall to wall—then went to the
fire-place, and walked slowly down the length of
the room, counting her steps. Pacing over
the dusty floor with a dainty regularity and
a childish satisfaction in looking down at the
gay pink rosettes on her morning-shoes;
holding up her crisp, bright muslin dress
out of the dirt, and showing the fanciful
embroidery of her petticoat, and the glossy
stockings that fitted her little feet and ankles
like a second skin, she moved through the
dreariness, the desolation, the dingy ruin of
the scene around her, the most charming
living contrast to its dead gloom that youth,
health, and beauty could present.

Arrived at the bottom of the room, she
reflected a little, and said to her husband:—

"Do you remember the blue drawing-
room, Lenny, in your father's house at Long
Beckley? I think this room is quite as large,
if not larger."

"What are the walls like?" asked Leonard,
placing his hand on the wall behind
him while he spoke. "They are covered
with paper, are they not?"

"Yes; with faded red paper, except on one
side, where strips have been torn off and
thrown on the floor. There is wainscoting
round the walls. It is cracked in many
places, and has ragged holes in it, which
seem to have been made by the rats and
mice."

"Are there any pictures on the walls?"

"No. There is an empty frame over the
fire-place. And, opposite—I mean just above
where I am standing now—there is a small
mirror, cracked in the centre, with broken
branches for candlesticks projecting on either
side of it. Above that, again, there is a
stag's head and antlers; some of the face has
dropped away, and a perfect maze of
cobwebs is stretched between the horns. On
the other walls there are large nails, with
more cobwebs hanging down from them
heavy with dirt—but no pictures anywhere.
Now you know everything about the walls.
What is the next thing? The floor?

"I think, Rosamond, my feet have told me
already what the floor is like."

"They may have told you that it is bare,
dear; but I can tell you more than
that. It slopes down from every side
towards the middle of the room. It is
covered thick with dust, which is swept
about—I suppose by the wind blowing
through the broken panes—into strange,
wavy, feathery shapes that quite hide the
floor beneath. Lenny! suppose these boards
should be made to take up anywhere!
If we discover nothing to-day, we will have
them swept to-morrow. In the meantime,
I must go on telling you about the room,
must I not? You know already what the
size of it is, what the window is like, what
the walls are like, what the floor is like. Is
there anything else before we come to the
furniture? O, yes! the ceiling—for that
completes the shell of the room. I can't see much
of it, it is so high. There are great cracks
and stains from one end to the other, and the
plaster has come away in patches in some
places. The centre ornament seems to be
made of alternate rows of small plaster
cabbages and large plaster lozenges. Two bits
of chain hang down from the middle, which, I
suppose, once held a chandelier. The cornice
is so dingy that I can hardly tell what
pattern it represents. It is very broad and
heavy, and it looks in some places as if it had
once been coloured, and that is all I can say
about it. Do you feel as if you thoroughly
understood the whole room now, Lenny?"

"Thoroughly, my love; I have the same
clear picture of it in my mind which you
always give me of everything you see. You
need waste no more time on me. We may
now devote ourselves to the purpose for which
we came here."

At those last words, the smile which had
been dawning on Rosamond's face when her
husband addressed her, vanished from it in a
moment. She stole close to his side, and,
bending down over him, with her arm on his
shoulder, said, in low, whispering tones:—

"When we had the other room opened,
opposite the landing, we began by examining
the furniture. We thought—if you remember
—that the mystery of the Myrtle Room might
be connected with hidden valuables that had
been stolen, or hidden papers that ought to
have been destroyed, or hidden stains and
traces of some crime, which even a chair or a
table might betray. Shall we examine the
furniture here?"

"Is there much of it, Rosamond?"

"More than there was in the other room,"
she answered.

"More than you can examine in one morning?"