A further drive along the bluffs that rose high above the water showed the bolder features of an American landscape unspoiled by overtreatment. The car finally brought them to the lower end of a long, formal avenue of elms that made a setting for the ample house of gray stone, placed on an elevation that commanded the whole of Second Lake and the southern country for many miles.
Its advantage of position was obvious and the castellated effect, from which its name derived, implied a strength of uncompromising pride commonly associated with the Kimberlys themselves.
At Dolly's suggestion they walked around through the south garden which lay toward the lake. At the garden entrance stood a sun-dial and Alice paused to read the inscription:
Per ogni ora che passa, im ricordo.
Per ogni ora che batte, una felicità.
Per ogni ora che viene, una speranza.
"It is a duplicate of a dial that Robert fancied in the garden of the Kimberly villa on Lago Maggiore," Dolly explained. "Come this way, I want you to see the lake and the terrace."
From the terrace they looked back again at the house. Well-placed windows and ample verandas afforded views in every direction of the surrounding country. Retracing their way to the main entrance, they ascended a broad flight of stone steps and entered the house itself.
Following Dolly into the hall, Alice saw a chamber almost severe in spaciousness and still somewhat untamed in its oak ruggedness. But glimpses into the apartments opening off it were delightfully satisfying.
They peeped into the dining-room as they passed. It was an old-day room, heavily beamed in gloomy oak, with a massive round table and high chairs. The room filled the whole southern exposure of its wing and at one end Alice saw a fireplace above which hung a great Dutch mirror framed in heavy seventeenth-century style. Dolly pointed to it: "It is our sole heirloom, and Robert won't change it from the fireplace. The Kimberly mirror, we call it--from Holland with our first Kimberly. The oak in this room is good."
Taken as a whole, however, Dolly frankly considered The Towers too evidently suggestive of the old-fashioned. This she satisfactorily accounted for by the fact that the house lacked the magic of a woman's presence.
Alice, walking with her, slowly and critically, found nowhere any discordant notes. The carpets offered the delicate restraints of Eastern fancy, and the wall pictures, seen in passing, invited more leisurely inspection.