"Yes, sir," he replied. "Sir Stephen's arrived. Came an hour ago."
Stafford nodded, and drove on.
The road was certainly a new one, but it was lined with rhododendrons and costly shrubs, and it wound and wound serpentine fashion through shrubberies and miniature plantations which indicated not only remarkably good taste, but vast expenditure. At intervals the trees had been felled to permit a view of the lake, lying below, like a sapphire glowing in the sunlight.
Presently they came in sight of the house. It was larger than it had looked in the distance; a veritable palace. An architect had received carte-blanche, and disporting himself right royally, had designed a façade which it would be hard to beat: at any rate, in England.
Stafford eyed it rather grumpily. Most Englishmen dislike ostentation and display; and to Stafford the place seemed garish and "loud." Howard surveyed it with cynical admiration.
"A dream of Kubla Kahn—don't know whether I've got the name right: poem of Coleridge's, you know—but of course you don't know; you don't go in for poetry. Well I'm bound to admit that it's striking, not to say beautiful," he went on, as the horses sprang up the last ascent and rattled on in an impatient, high-spirited trot along the level road to the terrace fronting the entrance.
As Stafford pulled up, a couple of grooms came forward; the hall door—enamelled in peacock blue—opened and a butler and two footmen in rich maroon livery appeared. They came down the white marble steps in stately fashion and ranged themselves as if the ceremony were of vast importance, and as Howard and Stafford got down they bowed with the air of attendants receiving royalty.
As Stafford, flinging the reins to one of the grooms, got down, he caught sight of a line of liveried servants in the hall, and he frowned slightly.
Like most young Englishmen, he hated ostentation, which he designated as "fuss."
"Rub 'em down well, Pottinger," he said, and he leisurely patted the horses while the gorgeous footmen watched with solemn impressiveness.