Lee nodded and smiled. She was so well satisfied that she hoped to lose herself in the pleasurable sensation of a dream realised, and forget certain disappointments and tremors. She had indulged in the dream of an enthusiastic welcome by the tenantry, triumphal arches, and other demonstrations of which she had read; for Cecil was the heir of this splendid domain, and he was bringing home his bride. But they had driven from the station as unobtrusively as two guests invited for a week’s shooting. Tiny had said to her the day before her departure for England:
“Make up your mind not to expect anything over there, and you will save yourself a great deal of disappointment. When you feel a chill settling over you, shake it off with the reflection that English ways are not our ways. They are the most casual people in the world, and their hospitality, although genuine, is so different from ours, that it seems at first no hospitality at all.”
Lee deliberately forced these words into her mind as Cecil lifted her from the carriage and she passed between two rigid footmen into the crypt of the Abbey. The vast dim columned greyness of the crypt was beautiful and impressive, and surely it was haunted in the midnight by indignant friars, but, save for the approaching butler, it was empty.
“Aren’t your father and stepmother at home?” asked Lee, as Cecil joined her.
“Father’s probably on the moors, and Emmy always lies down in the afternoon,” said Cecil indifferently. “We’ll go straight up to my old rooms. I hope you’ll like them, but of course if you don’t, you can take your choice of the others.”
They followed the butler up an immense stone staircase, then down five long corridors, whose innumerable windows framed so many different views of the grounds that Lee felt sure nothing less than a reel of silk would guide her back and forth. The corridors were lined with pictures and cabinets and curiosities of many centuries, but Lee barely glanced at them, so absorbed was she in wondering if the Abbey were a mile square. Cecil’s rooms were in the tower, and the tower was at the extreme right of the building’s front, but those corridors appeared to traverse the entire back and every wing. At length they passed under a low stone arch, ascended a spiral stone staircase, entered a small stone room fitted up with a desk, a sofa, and two chairs, and Cecil said:
“Here we are.”
“Well, I shall be glad to rest. Isn’t there a short cut to the grounds? If there isn’t, I’ll have to take all my exercise indoors.”
“There’s a door at the foot of the tower. And you’ll be a famous walker this time next year. You Californians are so lazy.”
He opened the door of the bedroom, a large old-fashioned severely-furnished room with a dressing-room beyond. Lee, who was luxurious by nature and habit, did not like it, but consoled herself with the charming landscape beyond the window.