Odd and unimportant details sometimes linger long in the memory. And I
remember noticing that a needle of sunlight, piercing a crack in the
gaily-striped awning rested upon a ring which Madame wore, so that the
diamonds glittered like sparks of white-hot fire.
CHAPTER VI
THE BARRIER
Colonel Menendez conducted us to a long, lofty library in which might
be detected the same note of un-English luxury manifested in the other
appointments of the house. The room, in common with every other which I
had visited in Cray's Folly, was carried out in oak: doors, window
frames, mantelpiece, and ceiling representing fine examples of this
massive woodwork. Indeed, if the eccentricity of the designer of Cray's
Folly were not sufficiently demonstrated by the peculiar plan of the
building, its construction wholly of granite and oak must have remarked
him a man of unusual if substantial ideas.
There were four long windows opening on to a veranda which commanded a
view of part of the rose garden and of three terraced lawns descending
to a lake upon which I perceived a number of swans. Beyond, in the
valley, lay verdant pastures, where cattle grazed.
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