He had forgotten all about it, but at this interesting juncture it was produced and read aloud by Beatrice.

Mrs.Thomas took it, and having examined it carefully through her horn-rimmed spectacles, was constrained to admit its authenticity.
"I'm sure I apologise, sir," she said with a half-doubtful courtesy and much tact, "but one can't be too careful with all these trampseses about; I never should have thought from the look of you, sir, how as you was the new squire." This might be candid, but it was not flattering, and it caused Beatrice to snigger behind her handkerchief in true school-girl fashion.

However, they entered, and were led by Mrs.Thomas with solemn pomp through the great and little halls, the stone parlour and the oak parlour, the library and the huge drawing-room, in which the white heads of marble statues protruded from the bags of brown holland wherewith they were wrapped about in a manner ghastly to behold.

At length they reached a small octagon-shaped room that, facing south, commanded a most glorious view of sea and land.

It was called the Lady's Boudoir, and joined another of about the same size, which in its former owner's time had been used as a smoking-room.
"If you don't mind, madam," said the lord of all this magnificence, "I should like to stop here, I am getting tired of walking." And there he stopped for many years.