Your Audrie?
P. S.—Eight-twenty in the morning, and I've been up for two hours.
You'd like Chichester immensely. I don't say "love," for it hasn't engaged my affections, somehow; but I do love the beautiful jewel of a market cross, and some of the tombs in the cathedral. The cross is quite a baby compared with lots of others, it seems, being only just born at the time Henry VIII. was cutting off pretty ladies' heads when he had tired of their hearts. Several tombs are so lovely, you almost want to be dead, and have one as like as possible; but, though part of the cathedral is satisfyingly old (eleventh century), its new spire reminds one of a badly chosen hat, and the whole building somehow looks cold and dull, like a person with a magnificent profile who never says anything illuminating.
"The jewel of a market cross"
As for Chichester itself, except the market cross, the only thing that has touched my heart was St. Mary's Hospital, surely the quaintest old almshouse on earth. The town has rather a self-conceited air to me, and unless one were wise, one mightn't realize without being informed that it's immemorably old. Of course, though, if one were wise, one would know the Romans had had a hand in the making or re-making of it, because of the geometric, regular way in which it's built. Sir Lionel Pendragon told me that. He seems to remember all he ever learned, whereas ever so many little bundles are already knocking about in dusty corners of my brain, with their labels lost.
There couldn't be a more thrilling road than the road along which we came to Chichester, and by which we will leave it in a few minutes now. Think of Roman Stane Street, and listen for the rumble of ghostly chariot wheels! Then—if you've not come this way for Goodwood races—you can throw your mind a little further ahead to the days of the crusaders and the pilgrims; and to kings' processions glittering with gold and glossy with velvets; to armies on their way to fight; and further ahead, to coaches plying along the Portsmouth road. I wonder how many people in the hundreds of motors that flash back and forth each day do think of it all? I pity those who don't, because they lose a thought that might embroider their world with rich colours.
P.P.S.—I met Sir Lionel, accidentally, of course, in the cathedral this morning, where he, too, was saying good-bye to the most fascinating of the old tombs. And wasn't it odd, we had the same favourites? They looked even nicer and queerer than yesterday, with no Mrs. Norton to spatter inappropriate remarks about.
We walked back to the hotel together, and he asked me, just as we were coming in, whether my allowance was enough, or would I like to have more?
I had burst out that it was heaps, before I stopped to realize that he was asking that question really of Ellaline, not of me. Perhaps I ought to have temporized, and said I would make up my mind in a few days—meanwhile writing to her. I suppose she must be quite an heiress; but he can't be as mercenary as she thinks, or he wouldn't have made such a suggestion.