Or perhaps," she went on, fixing that mild and lustrous eye upon him, "there was one of them whom I liked too well to wish----" She paused, for they had crossed the drawbridge and arrived opposite to the Old Hall.

The gorgeous Betty and the fair Margaret, accompanied by the others, and talking rapidly, had passed through the wide doorway into its spacious vestibule.

Inez looked after them, and perceived, standing like a guard at the foot of the open stair, that scarred suit of white armour and riven shield blazoned with the golden falcon, Isabella's gift, in which Peter had fought and conquered the Marquis of Morella.

Then she stepped back and contemplated the house critically.
At each end of it rose a stone tower, built for the purposes of defence, and all around ran a deep moat.

Within the circle of this moat, and surrounded by poplars and ancient yews, on the south side of the Hall lay a walled pleasaunce, or garden, of turf pierced by paths and planted with flowering hawthorns and other shrubs, and at the end of it, almost hidden in drooping willows, a stone basin of water.