Alice and many others had hoped that the wrecked vessel was still afloat, but the Altonia had disappeared,—was far below in hundreds of fathoms of water.
CHAPTER XII. — FERNBOROUGH HALL
Fernborough Hall,—not a hall in the town of Fernborough in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but a rambling, old-fashioned brick building in the County of Sussex in “Merrie England;” a stately home set in the middle of hundreds of acres of upland, lowland, and woodland. Wings had been added as required, and a tower from which, on a clear day, the English Channel could be seen with the naked eye, while a field-glass brought into view the myriad craft, bound east and west, north and south, on the peaceful missions of trade.
There was no terrace upon which gaudy peacocks strutted back and forth, but in front of the Hall was a small artificial lake in which some transplanted fish led the lives of prisoners. Lady Fernborough begged the Baronet to end their miserable existence, but, to him, innovation was folly and destruction bordered on criminality.
“When I am gone, Ella,” he would say, “you may introduce your American ideas, for everything will be yours. When the Fernborough name dies, let the fish die too.”
The long search for his lost daughter had made him misanthropic. His knowledge of her sad death had been accompanied, it is true, by the pleasing intelligence that his daughter's child lived, but that grand-daughter, though of his blood and British born, had not been educated according to British ideas. To be sure, she was now a Countess, but she had been transplanted to her native soil, and had not grown there.
It might be asked, if he was so insular in his ideas, why had he taken an American wife, and she a widow? He had been charmed by her vivacity. She lifted him out of the gloom in which he had lived so long. If she had been tame and prosaic, she would have worn the weeds of widowhood again in a short time. She made him comfortable; she surrounded him with the brightest people she could find; he was not allowed to mope indoors, and Sir Stuart Fernborough and his sprightly American wife attended all the important social functions of the County, and many in London, and at the houses of their friends. And now a great joy was to come to Lady Fernborough. She expected visitors from the United States, and what she considered needful preparations kept her in a flutter of excitement.
“How soon do you expect them?” asked Sir Stuart at breakfast.