"You are given over body and soul to my poor mother's fads," he said. "If it had not been for you I should have turned the house out of windows when she was gone—got rid of all the worm-eaten furniture, broken out new windows, and let in more light. One feels half asleep in a house where there is nothing but shadow and the scent of hot-house flowers. I should have given carte blanche to some London man—the fellow who writes verses, and who invented the storks and sunflower style of decoration—and have let him refurnish the saloon and music-room, pitch out a library which nobody reads, and substitute half a dozen dwarf book-cases in gold and ebony, filled with brightly bound books, and with Japanese jars and bottles on the top of them to give life and colour to the oak panelling. I hate a gloomy house."
"Oh, Leonard, you surely would not call Mount Royal gloomy!"
"But I do: I hate a house that smells of one's ancestors."
"Just now you objected to the scent of the flowers."
"You are always catching me up—there was never such a woman to argue—but I mean what I say. The smell is a combination of stephanotis and old bones. I wish you would let me build you a villa at Torquay or Dartmouth. I think I should prefer Dartmouth: it's a better place for yachting."
"You are very kind, but I would rather live at Mount Royal than anywhere else. Remember I was brought up here."
"A reason for your being heartily sick of the house—as I am. But I suppose in your case there are associations—sentimental associations."
"The house is filled with memories of my second mother!"
"Yes—and there are other memories—associations which you love to nurse and brood upon. I think I know all about it—can read up your feelings to a nicety."
"You can think and say what you please, Leonard," she answered, looking at him with unaltered calmness, "but you will never make me disown my love of this place, and its surroundings. You will never make me ashamed of being fond of the home in which I have spent my life."