Chapter 8 - Page 2

much from the relaxing atmosphere--and to draw groans from the
gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a
zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope.
The exterior of the house had been familiar to her from her
childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach to
knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It was
with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected
that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few days
before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings,
stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt;
latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was
supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate.
Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this
deprivation might possibly account for her sudden interest in
Grace.

Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall
when Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass
doors between them. She came forward with a smile on her face,
and told the young girl it was good of her to come.

"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes
were attracted by some curious objects against the walls. "They
are man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and
spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his
neighbors. He knew the histories of all these--which gin had
broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I
remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of
a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done,
went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of
his body, and died of the wound. I don't like them here, but I've
never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added,
playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous significance where a
person of our sex lives, are they not?"

Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one
which her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.

"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time
happily past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied
designs of these instruments of torture--some with semi-circular
jaws, some with rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth,
but a few with none, so that their jaws looked like the blank gums
of old age.

"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond,
with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When
she had shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she
deemed likely to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings,
ivories, miniatures, and so on--always with a mien of