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He had not entered the place for more than four years-not,

indeed, since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a

child, and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a

large, well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by

the last Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for

his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons,

he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It

appeared to Dorian to have but little changed. There was the huge

Italian cassone, with its fantastically painted panels and its

tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself

as a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared

schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged

Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing chess

in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded

birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all!