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36 died away, and he could hear no other sounds except the occasional soft tread of some servant, he twisted himself about in his chair and looked around. A door between the room he was in and the large room which had been upon his right as they came in—a drawing-room—stood open; he could see into the drawing-room, and he could see through the other door a portion of the hall; his inspection of these increased the bewilderment he felt. Who were these Sherrills? Who was Corvet, and what was his relation to the Sherrills? What, beyond all, was their and Corvet's relation to Alan Conrad—to himself? The shock and confusion he had felt at the nature of his reception in Corvet's house, and the strangeness of his transition from his little Kansas town to a place and people such as this, had prevented him from inquiring directly from Constance Sherrill as to that; and, on her part, she had assumed, plainly, that he already knew and need not be told.

He got up and moved about the rooms; they, like all rooms, must tell something about the people who lived in them. The rooms were large and open; Alan, in dreaming and fancying to himself the places to which he might some day be summoned, had never dreamed of entering such a home as this. For it was a home; in its light and in its furnishings there was nothing of the stiffness and aloofness which Alan, never having seen such rooms except in pictures, had imagined to be necessary evils accompanying riches and luxury; it was not the richness of its furnishings that impressed him first, it was its livableness. Among the more modern pieces in the drawing-room and hall were some which were antique. In the part of the hall that he could see, a black and ancient-looking chair whose lines he recog-