It was evidently the housekeeper's reading of some written suggestion of her noble master.

The Barbarian, in a flash of instinct, imagined the passage:-- "Humor him as a harmless lunatic; the plate is quite safe." Declining the further offer of an illumination of the picture gallery, grand drawing-room, ball-room, and chapel, a few hours later he found himself wandering in the corridor with a single candle and a growing conviction of the hopelessness of his experiment.

The castle had as yet yielded to him nothing that he had not seen before in the distraction of company and the garishness of day.

It was becoming a trifle monotonous.
Yet fine--exceedingly; and now that a change of wind had lifted the fog, and the full moon shone on the lower half of the pictures of the gallery, starting into the most artificial simulation of life a number of Van Dyke legs, farthingales, and fingers that would have deceived nobody, it seemed gracious, gentle, and innocent beyond expression.
Wandering down the gallery, conscious of being more like a ghost than any of the painted figures, and that they might reasonably object to him, he wished he could meet the original of one of those pictured gallants and secretly compare his fingers with the copy.

He remembered an embroidered pair of gloves in a cabinet and a suit of armor on the wall that, in measurement, did not seem to bear out the delicacy of the one nor the majesty of the other.