And at sight of the Lodge itself she grew rapturous.
Sir Henry Millard’s modest country residence was nothing more than a fair-sized one-storied white cottage, close to the road, from which it was separated only by a little garden just big enough to contain a semicircular drive, a small half-moon lawn, and two side-beds full of roses. A stone-paved verandah ran the whole length of the house, and a hammock swung between two of the supports of the green roof, in what would have been glaring publicity if there had ever been any public to speak of on the quiet road in front. It would have been rather a pretty little place if Sir Henry, to meet the requirements of his family, had not preferred enlarging it by adding at the back various hideous red brick wings and outbuildings of his own designing, to the more reasonable course of taking a larger house. The pleasure of conceiving and superintending these original “improvements” had indeed, while it lasted, been the most unalloyed joy of Sir Henry’s simple life; to worry the architect, who had had to be called in at the last to put a restraining check on Sir Henry’s inspirations, which threatened to dispense with the vulgar adjuncts of passages and staircases; to test the building materials, samples of which lay about the sitting-rooms for days; above all, to do a little amateur bricklaying during the workmen’s dinner hour—were joys the mere memory of which thrilled him more than any recollection of his honeymoon.
Whatever the architectural defects of the house might be, Nouna had nothing but admiration for it. The tiny little hall; the box-like drawing-room to the right, with high glass cupboards on each side of the fireplace containing apostle spoons, old china bowls, fragments of quartz and the like; the bare-looking dining-room to the left, furnished as plainly as a school-room, and even the bake-house which led out from it, all enchanted her by their novelty; while the bedroom up stairs, ten feet square, into which she was shown, put the climax to this deliciously new experience, and made her feel, as she expressed herself to her husband, “that she wished she had married a farmer.”
To George’s delight she ran down stairs within twenty minutes of her arrival in the simplest of white muslin frocks, with a wonderful scarlet and gold sash. But he had no time to congratulate her on her good sense in dressing so appropriately before she was off, in a huge garden-hat taken with instinctive knowledge of what was most becoming from a collection in the hall, to see the farmyard—Sir Henry’s pride. They made an odd pair—the broad-shouldered, solid-looking country gentleman, in his rough suit, and the small airily-clad person who varied her progress by occasional ecstatic bounds in the air, which made the ends of her sash swirl in the breeze like the wings of some gorgeous butterfly. George and the girls, with Lady Millard, followed much more sedately. When, after due admiration of cows and horses, pigs and poultry, they all returned to the verandah, fresh objects of interest presented themselves in a pretty group of riders at that moment climbing the hill upon which the lodge stood.
“Uncle Horace!” cried the girls, as Nouna recognised in the eldest of the party Lord Florencecourt. He was accompanied by two pretty boys of about eight and ten on ponies which they already managed as if boy and pony had been one creature.
“How Horace worships those boys!” muttered Sir Henry enviously.
Charlotte had run down to open the gate, and there was much clatter of lively greeting. Lord Florencecourt, though he seemed happier down here with his children than he had been in town, showed his old constraint with Nouna. It was therefore with great surprise not only to the young husband and wife, but to their host and his family that they learnt the object of his visit.
“You see I haven’t lost much time in paying my respects, Mrs. Lauriston,” he said, speaking in a lively tone, but with an ill-concealed reluctance to meet her eyes. “Those girls would like to flatter themselves that my visit is for them, but they are all wrong.”
“Never mind, uncle, Regie and Bertie come to see us,” cried Ella, giving a kiss to the youngest boy.
Lord Florencecourt continued: “The fact is, Mrs. Lauriston, we know that you will be so run after down here, that when you have been seen a little there will be no getting hold of you. So my wife sent me to ask you and George to stay with us from Friday to Monday the week after next. Mr. Birch, our member, will be there, and we thought as he has come to the front so much lately you might like to meet him.” Nouna stole a triumphant glance at her husband, and the girls, who were near enough to hear, could not forbear little unseen eyebrow-raisings of astonishment. He went on: “Lady Florencecourt will call upon you on Monday, but she thought it best to send her invitation at once to make sure of you.”