"I must always feel toward her as a brother," he thought; "and she has nobly proved toward me that she regards me as such. One of my first acts must be to disabuse her mind of the idea that I would so lightly draw my sword against my cousin Henry's life."
Then turning to Mr. Drayton, he asked, "Is there any picture of Lady Danvers here?"
"Only one, sir, in her own morning room," replied the steward; "it was taken when she was quite a child, and she would never sit for one afterward. This is the room;" and, taking a step or two forward, he opened a door on the left.
The lights the servant carried slowly penetrated the gloom, and Ralph gazed round with deep interest at the arrangement of the place where so fair and interesting a creature as Hortensia made her ordinary abode. Nowhere could his eye rest without finding some proof of her fine taste, and of a certain spirit of order, neatness, and decoration rarely met with in one so young. Antique cabinets of ebony, with silver hinges and locks, were in several parts of the room, containing, doubtless, many little treasures of virtù. A large table in the middle, supported by richly-carved and twisted columns of dark-black oak, was covered with miniatures, carvings in ivory, pieces of rare china, curious ancient ornaments, one or two small books in very antique bindings, and two or three small statues in bronze or ivory, which might, perhaps, have employed the hand of Cellini or Bologna. There, too, were a number of specimens of the cinqui-cento art, placed beneath glass covers to keep them from the dust; a crucifixion in ivory, where the intense passion of the expression seemed to make the dead material live; a drinking-cup of silver, from the sides of which stood out in bold relief some scores of figures holding up wreaths of flowers to the brim, as if to catch the drops of wine that might rim over, and every figure differing from the other, but anatomically perfect and full of grace; a salt-cellar of gold, used probably at high festivals in days of yore, where, on a large cockle-shell, intended to contain the salt, stood the figure of Neptune waving his trident over the heads of two sea-horses, while round about were exquisitely grouped, with arms sometimes linked together, sometimes cast round each other's necks or shoulders in every different attitude that can be conceived, the numberless deities of the wave.