And then, all at once, Radmore’s quick eye detected a concealed door in the wall, on which there were encrusted the sham book titles often to be found on the doors of an old country home library.  Quickly he went across and, opening it, found it gave straight on to a corkscrew staircase.

Filled with a queer sense of adventure, he motioned Betty to go up first, in front of him.

The staircase led up to a tiny lobby, into which opened a most beautiful bedchamber, a replica as to shape and size of the library beneath.

The furniture there interested Betty, for she had never seen anything like it, except once in a chateau near Arras.  It was First Empire, and on the pin-cushion, lying on the ornate dressing-table, someone had written in a fine Italian hand on an envelope, the words:  “This room was furnished from Paris in 1810.  The bed is a replica of a bed made for the Empress Josephine.”

They went on through many of the rooms on the upper floor, full to-day of still, sunny late autumn charm.

Radmore scarcely spoke at all during their curious progress through the empty house, and Betty still felt as if in a dream.  She had asked herself again and again if he could really be thinking of buying this stately mansion.

The mere possibility of such a thing meant that he must be thinking of marrying Mrs. Crofton, and also that he must be much richer than any of them knew.

At last they came down a wide staircase which terminated in a corridor leading into the circular hall, and then it was Betty who broke what was becoming an oppressive silence: 

“Shall we go on and see the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, Godfrey?”

“No; they’re sure to be all right.”

Again came what seemed to Betty a long, unnatural silence.

“Do you really like the house?” he asked at last.

“I like it very much,” she said frankly.  “But wouldn’t it cost a tremendous lot of money, Godfrey?  It would be a pity not to buy it exactly as it stands.  It all seems so—­so—­”

“I know!  As if the furniture had grown there,” he broke in.

“So beautiful and so—­so unusual,” Betty went on diffidently.

“I’m afraid I’m a commonplace person, Betty.  I like a room to be beautiful, but I like comfort, and I think this is a very comfortable house.  I feel, somehow, as if happy, good people had lived here.  I like that, too.”

He was standing by one of the round pillars which carried out the type of architecture which had been the fashion at the time Doryford was built; and he was gazing at her with what seemed to her a rather odd expression on his dark face.  Was he going to tell her of his hopes or intention with regard to Mrs. Crofton?

Betty felt, for the first time that day, intensely shy.  She walked away, towards the big half-moon window opposite the front door.  A wide grass gallop, bordered with splendid old trees, stretched out as if illimitable, and she began gazing down it with unseeing eyes.