With a glance at the caller’s muddy condition the young son of the house decided it the part of prudence to assign him this waiting-place, while he himself should go in search of his uncle.  The lad had seen the big motor-car at the gate; quite naturally he took its driver for a chauffeur.

Ted looked in at the library door; his uncle was not there.  He raced off upstairs, not noting the change which had already taken place in the visitor’s appearance with the removal of the muddy coat and cap.

Richard Kendrick now looked a particularly personable young man, well built, well dressed, of the brown-haired, gray-eyed, clear-skinned type.  The eyes were very fine; the nose and mouth had the lines of distinction; the chin was—­positive.  Altogether the young man did not look the part he had that day been playing—­that of the rich young idler who drives a hundred and fifty miles in a powerful car, over the worst kind of roads, merely for the sake of diversion and a good luncheon.

While he waited Richard considered the hall, at one end of which he sat in the shadow.  There was something very homelike about this hall.  The quaint landscape paper on the walls, the perceptibly worn and faded crimson Turkey carpeting on the floors, the wide, spindle-balustrade staircase with the old clock on its landing; more than all, perhaps, on an October night like this, the warm glow from a lamp with crystal pendants which stood on the table of polished mahogany near the front door—­all these things combined to give the place a quite distinctive look of home.

There were one or two other touches in the picture worth mentioning, the touches which spoke of human life.  An old-fashioned hat-tree just opposite the rear door was hung full with hats.  A heavy ulster lay over a chair close by, and two umbrellas stood in the corner.  And over hat-rack, hats, ulster, and chair, with one end of silken fringe caught upon one of the umbrella ribs, had been flung by some careless hand, presumably feminine, a long silken scarf of the most intense rose-colour, a hue so vivid, as the light caught it from the landing above, that it seemed almost to be alive.

From various parts of the house came sounds—­of voices and of footsteps, more than once of distant laughter.  Far above somewhere a child’s high call rang out.  Nearer at hand some one touched the keys of a piano, playing snatches of Schumann—­Der Nussbaum, Mondnacht, Die Lotosblume.  Richard recognized the airs which thus reached his ears, and was sorry when they ceased.

Now there might be nothing in all this worth describing if the effect upon the observer had not been one to him so unaccustomed.  Though he had lived to the age of twenty-eight years, he had never set foot in a place which seemed so curiously like a vague dream he had somewhere at the back of his head.  For the last two years he had lived with his grandfather in the great pile of stone which they called home.