was used occasionally, as, in accordance with the traditions of the family, dinner was served there whenever there were guests at the Manor.  Guests, indeed, at Scroope Manor were not very frequent;—­but Lady Scroope did occasionally have a friend or two to stay with her; and at long intervals the country clergymen and neighbouring squires were asked, with their wives, to dinner.  When the Earl and his Countess were alone they used a small breakfast parlour, and between this and the big dining-room there was the little chamber in which the Countess usually lived.  The Earl’s own room was at the back, or if the reader pleases, front of the house, near the door leading into the street, and was, of all rooms in the house, the gloomiest.

The atmosphere of the whole place was gloomy.  There were none of those charms of modern creation which now make the mansions of the wealthy among us bright and joyous.  There was not a billiard table in the house.  There was no conservatory nearer than the large old-fashioned greenhouse, which stood away by the kitchen garden and which seemed to belong exclusively to the gardener.  The papers on the walls were dark and sombre.  The mirrors were small and lustreless.  The carpets were old and dingy.  The windows did not open on to the terrace.  The furniture was hardly ancient, but yet antiquated and uncomfortable.  Throughout the house, and indeed throughout the estate, there was sufficient evidence of wealth; and there certainly was no evidence of parsimony; but at Scroope Manor money seemed never to have produced luxury.  The household was very large.  There was a butler, and a housekeeper, and various footmen, and a cook with large wages, and maidens in tribes to wait upon each other, and a colony of gardeners, and a coachman, and a head-groom, and under-grooms.  All these lived well under the old Earl, and knew the value of their privileges.  There was much to get, and almost nothing to do.  A servant might live for ever at Scroope Manor,—­if only sufficiently submissive to Mrs. Bunce the housekeeper.  There was certainly no parsimony at the Manor, but the luxurious living of the household was confined to the servants’ department.

To a stranger, and perhaps also to the inmates, the idea of gloom about the place was greatly increased by the absence of any garden or lawn near the house.  Immediately in front of the mansion, and between it and the park, there ran two broad gravel terraces, one above another; and below these the deer would come and browse.  To the left of the house, at nearly a quarter of a mile distant from it, there was a very large garden indeed,—­flower-gardens, and kitchen-gardens, and orchards; all ugly, and old-fashioned, but producing excellent crops in their kind.  But they were away, and were not seen.  Oat flowers were occasionally brought into the house,—­but the place was never filled with flowers as country houses are filled with them now-a-days.  No doubt had Lady Scroope wished for more she might have had more.