“A bare rock would be lovelier than India to me if it bore the name of England,” he replied. “I thank God that I shall die, after all, within hail of so sweet a plain as that.”
“No!” said Marion, in a low, disturbed voice. Her horse was standing close to that side of the carriage on which Mr. Grant sat, and the word was audible only to him. He looked round at her and added with a smile, “In the fullness of time.”
The coachman began to point out the points of interest: “That’s Twickenham Church, ma’am. Mr. Pope’s willa is a bit furder down. Yonder’s Mr. Orace Walpole’s place. Of a clear day, sir, you may see Winser Cassel, twenty mile off. Hepsom will be that-away, sir.”
“What do you think of it?” Philip asked Marion.
“It has a homely look,” she answered—“home-like, I mean.”
“Yes; we might ride round the world, and not find a better home than that,” said he, pointing down the declivity to a house that stood by the margin of the river, on a smooth green lawn overshadowed by stately elms.
“Or a worse one, maybe!” she returned coldly. But the next moment she glanced at him with a smile that was not so cold.
The party moved on once more, and at the end of a little more climbing, reached the famous inn, which, at that epoch, was a much less grandiloquent structure than it is now, and infinitely more humane toward its guests. The riders dismounted, the horses were led to the stable; and Mr. Grant, having had a confidential consultation with the host and the head waiter, proposed to his friends a ramble in the park. So off they all went, at first in a group; but after a while Mrs. Lockhart wished to sit down on a bench that was wedged between two oaks of mighty girth; and as Mr. Grant seemed equally inclined to repose, Philip presently drew Marion away across the glade. It dipped through a fern-brake, and then sloped upward again to a grove of solemn oaks, each one of which might have afforded house room to a whole family of dryads.
“I remember this grove,” Philip remarked; “I was here long ago—nearly twenty years. I was an Eton boy then. It has changed very little.”
“Less than you have.”