Presumably, Mrs.Hastings and Mr.
Frothingham were already at chess in the drawing-room awaiting dinner.

St.George heard a snatch of distant laughter, in quick little lilts like a song, and it occurred to him that its echo there was as if one were to pin a ruffle of lace to the grim stones.

Some one answered the laugh, and he heard the murmurous touching of soft skirts entering the corridor as he dived down the ancient dark of one of the musty passages.

There the silence was resumed.

In the palace it was as though the stillness were some living sleeper, waking with protests, thankful for the death of any echo.
No one was in the gallery.