A few minutes later we were seated in an open carriage, while a pair of spanking horses drew us along some typical Devonshire lanes.
'This is better than any motor-car, after all!' cried Edgecumbe, as he looked across the richly wooded valleys towards the wild moorland beyond. 'After all, horses belong to a countryside like this; motor-cars don't. If ever I——' but he did not complete his sentence. He was looking towards an old stone mansion nestling among the trees.
'That's it, that's surely it,' he cried.
'Is that Bolivick?' I asked the coachman.
'Yes, sir.'
'You might have been here before, Edgecumbe,' I said.
'No, no, I don't think I have—and yet—I don't know. It is familiar to me in a way, and yet it isn't. But it is glorious. See, the sun's rim is almost touching the hill tops,—what colour! what infinite beauty! Must not God be beautiful!'
The carriage dashed through a pair of great grey granite pillars, and a minute later we were in park lands, where the trees still threw their shade over the cattle which were lying beneath them.
'An English home,' I heard him say, 'just a typical English home. Oh, the thought of it is lovely!'
The carriage drew up at the door of the old mansion, and getting out, I saw Lorna Bolivick standing there.