“I was there; and I remember, when about to rejoin my companions, they were not alone.”
“And you disappeared; very suddenly I thought: for I left the ruins almost at the same moment as your friends, yet I never saw any of you again.”
“We took our course; a very rugged one; you perhaps pursued a more even way.”
“Was it your first visit to Marney?”
“My first and my last. There was no place I more desired to see; no place of which the vision made me so sad.”
“The glory has departed,” said Egremont mournfully.
“It is not that,” said Sybil: “I was prepared for decay, but not for such absolute desecration. The Abbey seems a quarry for materials to repair farm-houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they must be—that family of sacrilege who hold these lands!”
“Hem!” said Egremont. “They certainly do not appear to have much feeling for ecclesiastical art.”
“And for little else, as we were told,” said Sybil. “There was a fire at the Abbey farm the day we were there, and from all that reached us, it would appear the people were as little tendered as the Abbey walls.”
“They have some difficulty perhaps in employing their population in those parts.”