Read it through once

As might be expected of a house built amid such surroundings in Elizabeth’s day—rumour named it as of later Jacobean origin—it had a certain romantic character. We read of its “old sitting-room, with its large sunny oriel window, and its small walls wainscoted in small carved panels, and of the large oaken staircase, with a massive balustrade and broad low steps; of expansive fireplaces, with highly architectural chimney-pieces adorned with old-fashioned busts and coats-of-arms. Above all, there were two secret rooms, in which priests and cavaliers had been known to hide, and which could be well secured by inward fastenings; the one in a garret, where a triangular compartment of the wall pushed in and gave entrance to a chamber in the roof; the other, where the entire ceiling of a large light closet could be raised, and access obtained to a place of concealment capable of containing six or seven fugitives.”