A prettier country could hardly be imagined than that to which Grace Ambleton and her brother were being swiftly conveyed, after a lengthy absence abroad. They occupied, as a residence, a quaint, many-gabled house, that lay, surrounded by its old-fashioned garden, just beyond the cathedral boundaries and within sight of the close, in the old city of Dynechester, and all around and about them were scattered relics of a time dead and gone, covered over with that touch of unmistakable age, half delicate because of its intangibility, yet none the less indisputable.
Old trees stood like sentinels alone. The roof of Grace’s home was moss-decorated, and the tiny streets that led to the residence were narrow and ill-paved; ill-lit, too, Grace’s many girl friends would declare, in the dark winter days, and though there was nothing ghostly or cheerless once the doors of the Dower House were flung wide open, there was some of these friends who declared frankly among themselves that they would rather not live as Grace did in such a queer, many-centuried home, built so close to the cathedral walls and the cathedral burial ground.
Others there were who would most gladly have taken Grace’s place in this quaint old house, some for the sake of Valentine, the elder brother, and some for the sake of the laughing eyes and wonderfully handsome face of Sacha, the youngest of the two Ambleton men.
Grace was perfectly well aware of this divided feeling among her friends, but she was quite indifferent to all.
The Dower House was her home for as long as she chose to stay in it. She knew that, and she told herself on the morning after her return from her sojourn abroad, that she would be in no hurry to leave this home again, either for a temporary or a permanent absence. For Grace loved the house where she had been born, and where all her healthy childhood had been passed; she loved every stick and stone about the place.
There was a touch of welcome to her in the tall, gray, stately walls of Dynechester’s old cathedral, a voice of greeting in the sound of the familiar clock chimes and bells.
“I never want to go away any more,” she confessed to Bob, the Irish terrier, and Nancy, the Ayrshire one, and both animals understood, and were entirely of her opinion.
They had been brought from Dynechester two days before to greet their beloved mistress in London. Val had been detained in town on business, and Grace had remained with him, gratifying her longing for home by summoning one of the servants to come to her with the dogs, which she had been forced to leave behind when she had started for their long tour in foreign countries.
“It is like heaven to be back in the dear old corners,” she told herself more than once, and when she met Val later in the day she made him smile by her ardent delight in, and enthusiasm for, her home.
“Not much good taking you everywhere and showing you the great wonders of the world, Miss Grace!” her brother remarked, with a laugh.