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The antique crystal chandelier was showering a wealth of light on the long table, a table which could seat soilded chairs had only recently been re-covered in green satin daold was repeated in the wall-to-wall carpet, with a gold swirl on a green ground Gilded sideboards, inset with greens on the far wall

A need to apologize stole over ment of the place

"It's so unnecessary, Blackwood Manor," I told hiular inhabitants, I have the feeling that someone will come and make us turn it over for some more sensible use Of course there are other members of the family -- and then there's the staff, who are so daht that they don't have to work for anybody " I broke off, asha

"And ould a more sensible use be?" he asked in the same comfortable manner he had adopted before "Why should the house not be your gracious home?"

He was looking at the huge portrait of Aunt Queen when she was young -- a sht have been o, as it was; and at another portrait -- of Virginia Lee Blackwood, Manfred's wife, the first lady ever to live in Blackwood Manor

It was inia Lee, but the style was robust and faintly emotional, and the woman herself, blond with eyes of blue, was very honest to look at, and , with small features and an undeniably pretty face She was dressed ornately in the style of the 1880s, in a high-necked dress of sky blue with long sleeves puckered at the shoulders, and her hair heaped on the top of her head She had been the grandmother of Aunt Queen, and I always saw a certain likeness in these portraits, in the eyes and the shape of the faces, though others claimed they could not But then

And they had more than casual associations for inia Lee Aunt Queen I had still with inia LeeI shuddered but repressed those alienmy mind by storm

"Yes, why not your home, and the repository of your ancestors' treasures?" Lestat remarked innocently "I don't understand "

"Well, when I was growing up," I said in answer to his question, " then, and this was a sort of hotel A bed-and-breakfast hat they called it But they served dinner down here in the dining room as well Lots of tourists came up this way to spend some time in it We still have the Christers who stand on the staircase for the final caroling, while the guests gather here in the hall It all seems very useful at tiht Easter banquet as well, just so I could attend it "

A sense of the past shook uiltily trying to wring soood times now, or memories?

"I love the singers," I said "I used to cry with ht ' Blackwood Manor seems powerful at such times -- a place to alter people's lives You can tell I'ht up in it "

"How does it alter people's lives?" he asked quickly, as if the idea had hooked him

"Oh, there've been so s A hideous memory, a recent own, the

taste of it -- but I forced it out of my mind I went on:

"I res, and anniversary banquets I remember a picnic on the lawn for an elderlyback to visit the site where they'd beenrecollection -- a bride, a bride covered in blood My head swam