A month later the flag floated from Camylott Tower and the village was all alive with rustic¹ excitement, much ale being drunk at the Plough Horse and much eager gossip going on between the women, who had been running in and out of each other's cottages for three days to talk over each item of news as it reached them. Since the new Duke had taken possession of his inheritance there had been no rejoicing or company at the Tower, all the entertaining rooms having been kept closed, and the great house seeming grievously quiet even when his Grace came down to spend a few weeks in it. To himself the silence had been a sorrowful thing, but he had no desire to break it by filling the room with guests, and had indeed resolved in private thought not to throw open its doors until he brought to it a mistress. The lovely presence of the last mistress it had known had been so brightly illuminating² a thing, filling its rooms and galleries and the very park and terraces and gardens themselves with sunshine and joyousness⁴. In those happy days no apartment had seemed huge and empty, no space too great to warm and light with homely⁵ pleasure. But this fair torch extinguished, apartments large enough for royal banquets, labyrinths⁶ of corridors and galleries leading to chambers⁷ enough to serve a garrison⁸, seemed all the more desolate⁹ for their size and splendour, and in them their owner had suffered a sort of homesickness. 'Twas a strange thing to pass through the beautiful familiar places now that they were all thrown open and adorned¹⁰ for the coming guests, reflecting that the gala air was worn for her who should, Fate willing, have made her first visit as mistress, and realising that Fate had not been willing and that she came but as a guest and Countess of Dunstanwolde. Oh, it was a bitter,

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