"I never knew," she answered, almost stammeringly; "I never thought it was as lovely as this. Yet I've seen it from this very spot thousands of times. Why did it look so sad to me then, and so beautiful now?"
She looked up into his face as if it was a very knotty question for him to consider, and his grave expression relaxed a little as he answered her.
"You were not very happy here then," he suggested.
"I never knew a happy day till I knew your father," she replied; "and I've never known an unhappy one since. Is it happiness that makes a place look lovely?"
If it was so, thought Philip, this place could have no beauty for him. Phyllis was not there, and his heart was very heavy for her absence. And not only for her absence, but from a growing dread of meeting with an opposition he had not anticipated. It was significant to him of trouble that his father and mother never spoke of Phyllis in his presence; he did not know that they were equally silent with one another. Though it was the rector who had prevented her from coming north, he could not help guessing that it was his father who had, in some way, been the real hinderer. The rector could have no objection to himself as Phyllis's suitor, and he felt sure that he at least had looked upon him as her future husband. Phyllis, too, was certain of it, and so were the boys. He was only waiting till he came of age, and stepped into his right of free and independent manhood, to tell his father that he had chosen Phyllis as his wife.
"It is not only happiness that makes a place lovely," pursued Dorothy, after a pause, "it is being with people one loves. Do you see that window just touched by the end of a branch of those Scotch firs? Your mother is in that room. I cannot see her, of course; but that window is more beautiful to me because I know she is there. And I know all the rooms, and how they will be occupied; and the whole house is full of interest to my mind. So that even if it was an ugly place, it could not be altogether ugly to me."
There was a pleasant ring in her voice which was new to Philip's ear, He looked long and earnestly at the old house, which some day would belong to him, unless it was pulled down to make room for a finer mansion. It already belonged to him because it belonged to his father. It was a beautiful old place, with the gray stones of the strong wall surrounding it made warm with golden mosses; and the front of the house covered with undipped ivy-branches, hanging in glistening festoons from every point of vantage. Such a place could not be built or made. Why should he be such a Goth as to erect a brand-new mansion, which could possess no such charm and beauty until he, and generations of his sons, were moldering in their graves?
"Wouldn't it be a pity to pull it down?" asked Dorothy, as if she read his thoughts; "but Phyllis would find the rooms too small, and too low for her. I described it to her one day, and drew a sort of plan of it; and she said it was only a big rambling farmhouse, and you must build a much grander place, because Sir John Martin left a large sum of money to build it with. So I thought, was it quite impossible for me to buy it, and you build a house somewhere near it? Then we should always be neighbors; and it is very lonely here in the winter. Do you think Phyllis would like to live here in the winter?"
It was sweet to him to hear Phyllis's name spoken in this way; no one had uttered it in his presence for a fortnight except the boys, and they spoke it with a sort of jeer, as brothers sometimes do. Dorothy's gentle voice lingered shyly over it. He looked down into her shining eyes with a smile in his own.
"We must not talk of Phyllis living here yet," he said, "not till the day after to-morrow."