I thought this might be General Sternwood's grandfather. The officer had a neat black imperial, black moustachios, hot hard coal-black eyes, and the general look of a man it would pay to get along with. The portrait was a stiffly posed job of an officer in full regimentals of about the time of the Mexican war. Above the mantel there was a large oil portrait, and above the portrait two bullet-torn or moth-eaten cavalry pennants crossed in a glass frame. In the middle of the west wall there was a big empty fireplace with a brass screen in four hinged panels, and over the fireplace a marble mantel with cupids at the corners. They didn't look as if anybody had ever sat in them. Large hard chairs with rounded red plush seats were backed into the vacant spaces of the wall round about. On the east side of the hall, a free staircase, tile-paved, rose to a gallery with a wrought-iron railing and another piece of stained-glass romance.
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