The grandeur of the stately place was marred, however, by signs of revel and rough usage.

The Persian monarch, spared by his Grecian conqueror, had been deprived, by some more modern barbarian, of his eyes; while the face of his royal consort had been cut out of the threaded picture, to judge by the ragged end of the canvas, by a penknife.

The very pillars were notched in places, as though some mad revelers had striven to climb to the pictured ceiling, from which gods and men looked down upon them with amaze; the thick-piled carpet of the stairs was cut and torn, doubtless by horses' hoofs; and here and there a gap in the gilt balusters showed where they had been torn away in brutal frolic.

A groom of the chambers preceded the new guest up stairs, and introduced him to a bachelor's apartment, small, but well furnished in the modern style, whither his portmanteau had been already taken.

"Squire has given orders, Sir," said he, respectfully, "that he should be informed as soon as you arrived.