Miss De Stancy had great pleasure in giving Mr.Somerset full permission to walk through whatever parts of the building he chose.
He followed the butler into the inner buildings of the fortress, the ponderous thickness of whose walls made itself felt like a physical pressure.

An internal stone staircase, ranged round four sides of a square, was next revealed, leading at the top of one flight into a spacious hall, which seemed to occupy the whole area of the keep.

From this apartment a corridor floored with black oak led to the more modern wing, where light and air were treated in a less gingerly fashion.
Here passages were broader than in the oldest portion, and upholstery enlisted in the service of the fine arts hid to a great extent the coldness of the walls.
Somerset was now left to himself, and roving freely from room to room he found time to inspect the different objects of interest that abounded there.

Not all the chambers, even of the habitable division, were in use as dwelling-rooms, though these were still numerous enough for the wants of an ordinary country family.

In a long gallery with a coved ceiling of arabesques which had once been gilded, hung a series of paintings representing the past personages of the De Stancy line.