AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
Graylees Castle,
Night of September 12th
Dearest and Wisest: I remember the first letter I wrote you (on July Fourth) about the Ellaline business began with expressions something like this: "Fireworks! Roman Candles!! Rockets!!!"
Well, my last letter about the Ellaline business begins with explosions, too. A whole gunpowder plot has exploded: Dick's plot.
We got here in the afternoon; an uneventful run, for Sir Lionel was always the same; cool but kind. I couldn't believe Dick had told him anything.
Graylees is a place to be proud of, and you would never know there had been a fire in the castle—but no injury was done to the oldest part. Mrs. Norton says Graylees is called the "miniature Warwick," but it doesn't look a miniature anything: it seems enormous. There's a great hall, with suits of armour scattered about, and weapons of all periods arranged in intricate patterns on the stone wall; and a minstrels' gallery, and quantities of grand old Tudor and Stuart furniture; there's a haunted picture-gallery where a murdered bride walks each Christmas Eve, beautifully dressed; there's a suite of rooms in which kings and queens have occasionally slept since the time when Henry Seventh reigned; there's a priest's "hidie hole," and secret dungeons under the big dining-hall where people used to revel while their prisoners writhed; and—but I haven't seen nearly all yet.
The room allotted to me looks down from its high tower on to a mossy moat choked with pink and white water lilies; on a stone terrace this side of a sunken garden, a peacock plays sentinel, with his tail spread like a jewelled shield; and against the sky dark, horizontal branches of Lebanon cedars stretch, like arms of black-clad priests pronouncing a blessing. May the blessing rest upon this house forever!
I hardly saw the country through which we came, though it was George Eliot's country; and I half expected something to happen as soon as we arrived; Sir Lionel perhaps turning on me at last, and saying icily: "I know everything, but don't want a scandal. Go quietly, at once."
Nothing of the sort came to pass, however. We had tea in the great hall, brought by an old butler who had known Sir Lionel when he visited the uncle who left Graylees to him. Afterward, Mrs. Norton showed me "my room," where already a maid engaged for "Miss Lethbridge" had unpacked most of my things, the big luggage having arrived before us. My heart gave a jump when I saw the drawers, and big cedar-lined wardrobes full of finery; but settled down again when I remembered that almost everything belonged to Ellaline, and that my legitimate possessions could be packed again in about five minutes.