In after days Mr. Samuel Savage informed me that I was quite right in this surmise.  He said he thought that, judging from my somewhat unconventional appearance, I might be one of the dangerous class of whom he had been reading in the papers, namely, a “hanarchist.”  I write the word as he pronounced it, for here comes the curious thing.  This man, so flawless, so well instructed in some respects, had a fault which gave everything away.  His h’s were uncertain.  Three of them would come quite right, but the fourth, let us say, would be conspicuous either by its utter absence or by its unwanted appearance.  He could speak, when describing the Ragnall pictures, in rotund and flowing periods that would scarcely have disgraced the pen of Gibbon.  Then suddenly that “h” would appear or disappear, and the illusion was over.  It was like a sudden shock of cold water down the back.  I never discovered the origin of his family; it was a matter of which he did not speak, perhaps because he was vague about it himself; but if an earl of Norman blood had married a handsome Cockney kitchenmaid of native ability, I can quite imagine that Samuel Savage might have been a child of the union.  For the rest he was a good man and a faithful one, for whom I have a high respect.

On this occasion he conducted us round the castle, or, rather, its more public rooms, showing us many treasures and, I should think, at least two hundred pictures by eminent and departed artists, which gave him an opportunity of exhibiting a peculiar, if somewhat erratic, knowledge of history.  To tell the truth, I began to wish that it were a little less full in detail, since on a December day those large apartments felt uncommonly cold.  Scroope and Miss Manners seemed to keep warm, perhaps with the inward fires of mutual admiration, but as I had no one to admire except Mr. Savage, a temperature of about 35 degrees produced its natural effect upon me.

At length we took a short cut from the large to the little gallery through a warmed and comfortable room, which I understood was Lord Ragnall’s study.  Halting for a moment by one of the fires, I observed a picture on the wall, over which a curtain was drawn, and asked Mr. Savage what it might be.

“That, sir,” he replied with a kind of haughty reserve, “is the portrait of her future ladyship, which his lordship keeps for his private heye.”

Miss Manners sniggered, and I said: 

“Oh, thank you.  What an ill-omened kind of thing to do!”

Then, observing through an open door the hall in which my hat had been taken from me, I lingered and as the others vanished in the little gallery, slipped into it, recovered my belongings, and passed out to the garden, purposing to walk there till I was warm again and Scroope reappeared.  While I marched up and down a terrace, on which, I remember, several very cold-looking peacocks were seated, like conscientious birds that knew it was their duty to be ornamental, however low the temperature, I heard some shots fired, apparently in a clump of ilex oaks which grew about five hundred yards away, and reflected to myself that they seemed to be those of a small rifle, not of a shotgun.