The King Diamond by Fred M. White — Read

There was no atmosphere of suspicion or trouble in the calm serenity of Ravenswood. The great house seemed to sleep in the sunshine, the lawns and rose gardens and the great elms behind appeared to be just as they had been any time in the last five hundred years, and, inside that fine old Elizabethan mansion, it was as if nothing had been touched since the days of the Restoration. The same old pictures, the same old furniture, and the same suggestion of refinement and mellowness. For Sir Samuel had been wise enough to take over Ravenswood exactly as it stood, and touched nothing. It was to this small corner of an earthly paradise that he welcomed his guests on the following Saturday afternoon. It was quite a small party--Lady Margaret Severn and her daughter, two prominent city magnates who do not concern the story at all, together with Sir Hercules and his secretary, and last but not least, Stella Ravenhill.

It seemed strange to Stella to stand once more in the great hall with its lantern roof, and the walls adorned with portraits of her own ancestors, but that was not a feeling that she was disposed to encourage. It was emphatically no time for sentimental reminiscences, because she knew only too well that, in all probability, Ravenswood was about to see most of the most remarkable happenings that had ever taken place in its long and eventful history. It was the custom there, as it always had been, to take tea in the great hall during the warmer months, and there Stella was seated with Lady Margaret at the moment when Sir Hercules, accompanied by his secretary, arrived.