“Often she would spend a morning lying in a hammock
beneath the old trees”
Above the terraces rose the old house itself. The Manor was built of a grayish stone, and was of Elizabethan architecture.
More than two hundred years old, it had been remodelled and added to by its various successive owners, but much of its fine old, original plan was left.
Ivy clung to its walls, and birds fluttered in and out continually.
There was a tower on either side the great entrance, and Patty loved to fancy that awful and mysterious deeds had been committed within those frowning walls.
But there was no legend or tradition attached to the mansion, and all its history seemed to be peaceful and pleasant.
Even the quaint old yew-tree walk, with its strangely misshapen shrubbery, was bright and cheerful in the morning sunlight, and the lake rippled like silver, and gave no hint of dark or gloomy depths.
And yet, Patty couldn’t help feeling that there was some shadow hanging over the Hartley family. They were never sad or low-spirited, but sometimes Mrs. Hartley would sigh, or Grandma Cromarty would look anxious, as if at some unrelievable sorrow.