Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/282

270 The whole place, designed in the sunny style of the early French and Spanish colonies, was covered with vines and the vesture of decay. But it had grown old gracefully, as a woman who, long after youth has fled, adds a late loveliness that charms more than her earlier bloom because of its haunting elusiveness and what it so pathetically suggests.

Now, from the apparently deserted house, floated the same strains of music, slow and sorrowful, as if someone were chanting a requiem for the dead. The great doors were swung open, their upper hinges dislocated by some violent convulsion. She entered, following the thread of song.

Dust and ashes lay everywhere. At every step she started little golden typhoons whirling in the stray sunbeams. There were mounds on the quaint eighteenth century tables and spindle-legged chairs, some overturned, some still upright and arranged in an intimate circle, unbroken by the capricious catastrophe that had startled their occupants into flight. Ceilings, mirrors, and candlesticks, were thick with mazes of cobwebs, and on one of the tables the torn pages of a book stirred in the breeze. It was bound in vellum and had a clasp of jewelled bronze. She looked at the torn stubs. So exquisite had been the workmanship that some of the colour of the illuminated French text still brightened the yellowing pages. It lay there just as the fair hand had left it. The girl looked around, almost expecting to hear the rustle of a silken skirt trailing through the room.

She started towards the door, but paused a moment to