"I should like to," I replied. "I'd any time rather have a cottage with a beautiful garden, than the most splendid mansion without one. I think out-of-doors is so much nicer than indoors. Perhaps it's my bringing up. In San Carlos we lived mostly in the verandah and on the terrace."
The house proved to be a quaint old stone manor, not large, and quite unpretentious, the kind of dwelling that was built in days gone by for the younger sons of gentry, who farmed a little land, and rode to hounds. Cathy begged the key from the care-taker at the lodge, and we wandered round the panelled rooms, wondering at the black oak beams of the ceilings, and the delightful ingle-nooks of the wide old-fashioned fireplaces.
"How splendid they would look full of blazing logs!" said Cathy. "These old walls ought to be hung with garlands of holly and mistletoe. It would just be the place for a Christmas party."
One room especially fascinated me. It was a small chamber half-way up the stairs, built above the porch, with a large mullioned window from which one looked out over the garden to the very limit of the horizon. The chimney-piece was richly carved, and panelled with coats of arms, but the central panel was occupied by a small oil-painting of a laughing girl, with lace ruffles and flowered bodice, whose fair hair fell in loose curls over her neck and shoulders. So lifelike was the portrait, that for a moment I felt as if the parted red lips were about to speak, and almost waited for the words, while the bright eyes seemed to look out from the wall as if they were following us round the room. In the extreme right-hand corner of the picture was painted the name: "Philippa Lovell".
"Who is she?" said Cathy, in response to my eager enquiries. "Why, the Lovells were a very old family who lived here in the time of the civil wars. Her father was for the King, but her only brother had declared for Cromwell and the Parliament. They met in battle at Naseby, and both fell, each fighting bravely for his own opinions. So the girl was the last of the race. She was a ward of Charles II, and he married her to one of his favourites, who cared for nothing but her lands and her money. She was miserable and ill at the London court, and at last she got leave to return to Cumberland; but it was too late, for she only came home to die. You can see her monument in the church, next to that of her father and brother; the Lovell coat of arms hangs over them all, and the words 'Sic transit gloria mundi'."
So this was the story of my poor little namesake. Her smiles had indeed soon been changed into tears, and very sad eyes must have looked out from the mullioned window to the distant sea. I felt as if the room were still occupied by her memory, and I closed the door almost reverently as I went out, murmuring to myself those lines from Longfellow:—
"We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates".
CHAPTER XII
THE IGNACIA
"These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell."