two o’clock
The footman ushered him into a hall , which seemed to be in the centre of the building , and where , little as the autumn was advanced , a fire was nevertheless burning and glowing on the hearth ; nor was its effect undesirable in the somewhat gloomy room . The servants had evidently received orders respecting the guest ; for they ushered him at once to his chamber , which seemed not to be one of those bachelor 's rooms , where , in an English mansion , young and single men are forced to be entertained with very bare and straitened accommodations ; but a large , well , though antiquely and solemnly furnished room , with a curtained bed , and all manner of elaborate contrivances for repose ; but the deep embrasures of the windows made it gloomy , with the little light that they admitted through their small panes . There must have been English attendance in this department of the household arrangements , at least ; for nothing could exceed the exquisite nicety and finish of everything in the room , the cleanliness , the attention to comfort , amid antique aspects of furniture ; the rich , deep preparations for repose . The servant told Redclyffe that his master had ridden out , and , adding that luncheon would be on the table at two o'clock , left him ; and Redclyffe sat some time trying to make out and distinguish the feelings with which he found himself here , and realizing a lifelong dream . He ran back over all the legends which the Doctor used to tell about this mansion , and wondered whether this old , rich chamber were the one where any of them had taken place ; whether the shadows of the dead haunted here . But , indeed , if this were the case , the apartment must have been very much changed , antique though it looked , with the second , or third , or whatever other numbered arrangement , since those old days of tapestry hangings and rush-strewed floor . Otherwise this stately and gloomy chamber was as likely as any other to have been the one where his ancestor appeared for the last time in the paternal mansion ; here he might have been the night before that mysterious Bloody Footstep was left on the threshold , whence had arisen so many wild legends , and since the impression of which nothing certain had ever been known respecting that ill-fated man , -- nothing certain in England at least , -- and whose story was left so ragged and questionable even by all that he could add .