The old butler paused also. "That," he said in his decorous monotone, "is Spentoli’s _Fallen Woman_. His lordship prefers to call it _The Captured Angel_. A very valuable piece of sculptury, I believe, madam. Quite one of the features of the place. His lordship sets great store by it, and it is universally admired by all visitors."
"It is wonderful," Maud said. But yet she turned her eyes away almost immediately. There was something about that mute, agonized figure of womanhood that she felt she could not bear to look upon except in solitude.
The butler stumped on down the great hall, and she followed, to a grand oak staircase that divided into two half-way up and led to a panelled gallery that ran along three sides of the hall. Solemnly they mounted. A high oak door confronted them at the top which the old man threw open with much ceremony.
"The grand piano, madam, is over by the west window," he said, and with another deep bow withdrew, closing the door without sound behind her.
Maud went forward into the room. The first impression she received was of great loftiness. It was a huge apartment, oak-panelled, and with a floor of polished oak. The whole of one side of the room was lighted by south windows that looked out over terraced gardens to the pine-woods of the park. At the end was a turret in the western angle of the wall, and here stood the piano, full in the glow of the sinking sun. There were two fireplaces in the room, and in the one nearer to the piano a red still fire was burning. A low couch stood before it, and a great tiger-skin--the only rug in the whole vast place--was spread on the hearth. There were other couches and strangely-shaped divans in the room, but no chairs, and only one small table. The whole effect was spacious and Eastern, curiously attractive to the senses and yet curiously elusive.
Maud went over the uncovered floor, treading lightly, with a feeling of having entered an enchanted land,--a feeling not wholly pleasant of being caught in a fairy web of subtleties from which she might not find it easy to escape.
The whole atmosphere breathed of Saltash. She was sure that he had designed every elusive detail.
The piano was thrown invitingly open. A French song was on the rack. It had the appearance of having been placed there but a moment before. A sudden doubt assailed her, a sensation as of having walked unwittingly into a trap. Some force had drawn her hither, some magnetism had surely been at work.