CHAPTER VII.
ACROSS THE SEA TO A WITCH'S CALDRON.
Broadlawns, on the outskirts of Bayswater, London, England, on the evening Charles Babbington-Cole, from Toronto, Canada, is expected, is all aglow with lights; its exterior a goodly spectacle with its many windows. A long, low, rambling house, the front relieved by cornice and architrave, and an immense portico from which white stone steps, wide and worn by many feet, lead to the lawns and gardens, which are gay with bright flowers, intersected with old-fashioned serpentine walks; one would call it not inaptly a garden of roses, such were their number, such their variety and beauty. Great masses of rhododendrons, with the fragrant honeysuckle, sweet-briar, and lauristina lent perfume to the air. Some fine oaks, with beech and graceful locusts, gave beauty to the lawns; stone stables, with farm and carriage houses at the back, with paved court-yard, and kitchen-garden luxuriant in growth, a very horn of plenty.
"A lovely spot, an ideal home," said numerous passers-by to and from the modern Babylon. Alas! that the interior should be a very inferno; in the library are assembled the family, for a family talk.
Miss Villiers, to whom did we not give precedence, would trample on some one to gain first place. Timothy Stone, her maternal uncle, and Elizabeth Stone, his sister and Aunt to Miss Villiers; the latter by sheer strength of will, since her babyhood, has ruled at Broadlawns, even though, owing to disastrous speculation, the whole family were penniless, save for the large fortune of her step-mother, Miss Villiers lived for, moved and had her being for kingdom. Intensely selfish, and totally devoid of feeling, an apt pupil of her aunt and uncle, she regards all sentiment, romance or disinterested acts of kindness as mawkish, unpractical foolishness.
A word of her looks. In height, five feet two, round shoulders slightly high, thin spare figure, a brunette in coloring; stony eyes of piercing blackness, always cold and searching as though planted closely in the forehead to read one through, as to whether any of her dark secrets have been discovered; a hook nose, thin, determined lips; hair black as the wing of a raven; the back of her head covered with short, snake-like curls, the front was drawn back in straight bands, thus giving prominence to features already too unclassically so.
As far as a man can be said to resemble a woman, so did, in looks and character, Timothy Stone his niece, save that his once coal-black hair is now white; his fishy eyes sunken, though keen as a razor; in height, five feet ten; of spare, alert figure, active as a prize racer, knowing as the jockey who rides him.
Elizabeth Stone is an older counter-part of her niece, save that she wears that fashionable mantle of to-day—the cloak of religion, in which, unlike her brother, she is so comfortable as never to allow it to fall from her angular shoulders.
The library, an old-fashioned, cold looking room, furnished in black oak, everything being in spotless order, from books biblical and secular, to Aunt Elizabeth's hands, folded just so on her stiff gown of black silk, as to cause one to long for déshabillé somewhere other than in the principles of those present.