"I am deeply sensible of your magnanimity," said he; "but I will not abuse it. They have let you the ugliest house in the United Kingdom; and, as the owner, the ultimate responsibility must come home to me."
"Oh," cried Susanna.
It was a gay, treble little cry, that told him he had been fortunate enough to amuse as well as to surprise her. She shook her head, while her eyes were liquid with mirth.
"The house is ugly?" she enquired. "I have read of it as 'a vast and imposing edifice in the style of the Renaissance.'"
"As a confessor of the True Faith," Anthony warned her, "you must never believe what you read in the County History. It was compiled by a Protestant clergyman; it teems with misinformation; it ought to be placed upon the Index. The house in question is a vast and pompous contiguity of stucco, in the style of 1830. It looks like a Riviera hotel a good deal run to seed. It looks like a shabby relation of Buckingham Palace. It looks like a barrack decorated with the discoloured trimmings of a bride-cake."
"Ah, well, be it so," consented Susanna. "The house is ugly—but it is comfortable. And, in any case, your conscience is too sensitive. The ultimate responsibility for my having taken it comes home to no one, unless—well, to be strictly just, unless to a grandfather of mine, who has been dead these many long years."
Which pronouncement may very possibly have struck her listener as enigmatic. But I daresay he felt that he scarcely knew her well enough to press for an elucidation. And, anyhow, without pause, she went on—
"Besides, everything else—the park, the country—is beyond words beautiful."
"Yes," acquiesced Anthony, "the country is beautiful, at this season.
That's why everyone abandons it, and scuttles up to town."
Susanna's face lighted, with interest.