Happily for this younger son his mother was a woman of fortune, and on her death George Ransome inherited Enderby Manor, the old house in which generations of Greswolds had come and gone since Dutch William was King of England. There had been a much older house pulled down to make room for that red brick mansion, and the Greswolds had been lords of the soil since the Wars of the Roses—red-rose to the heart’s core, and loyal to an unfortunate king, whether Plantagenet, Tudor, or Stuart.
By the conditions of his mother’s will, George Ransome assumed her family name and arms, and became George Ransome Greswold in all legal documents henceforward; but he signed himself George Greswold, and was known to his friends by that name. He had not loved his father nor his father’s race.
He came to The Hook often in that glorious summer weather. At the first he was grave and silent, and seemed oppressed by sad memories; but this seemed natural in one who had so lately lost a beloved parent. Gradually the ice melted, and his manner brightened. He came without being bidden. He contrived to make himself, as it were, a member of the family, whose appearance surprised nobody. He bought a steam-launch, which was always at Mr. Fausset’s disposal, and Miss Fausset went everywhere with her father. She recalled those sunlit days now, with every impression of the moment; the ever-growing sense of happiness; the silent delight in knowing herself beloved; the deepening reverence for the man who loved her; the limitless faith in his power of heart and brain; the confiding love which felt a protection in the very sound of his voice. Yes, those had been happy days—the rosy dawning of a great joy that was to last until the grave, Mildred Fausset had thought; and now, after thirteen years of wedded love, they had drifted apart. Sorrow, which should have drawn them nearer together, had served only to divide them.
“O, my lamb, if you could know in your heavenly home how much your loss has cost us!” thought the mother, with the image of that beloved child before her eyes.
There had been a gloomy reserve in George Greswold’s grief which had held his wife at a distance, and had wounded her sorrowful heart. He was selfish in his sorrow, forgetting that her loss was as great as his. He had bowed his head before inexorable Fate, had sat down in dust and ashes, and brooded over his bereavement, solitary, despairing. If he did not curse God in his anguish, it was because early teaching still prevailed, and the habits of thought he had learned in childhood were not lightly to be flung off. Upon one side of his character he was a Pagan, seeing in this affliction the hand of Nemesis, the blind Avenger.
They left Switzerland in the late autumn, and wintered in Vienna, where Mr. Greswold gave himself up to study, and where neither he nor his wife took any part in the gaieties of the capital. Here they lived until the spring, and then, even in the depths of his gloom, a yearning came upon George Greswold to see the home of his race, the manor which he had loved as if it were a living thing.
“Mildred, do you think you could bear to be in the old home again?” he asked his wife suddenly, one morning at breakfast.
“I could bear anything better than the life we lead here,” she answered, her eyes filling with tears.
“We will go back, then—yes, even if it is only to look upon our daughter’s grave.”
They went back to England and to Enderby Manor within a week after that conversation. They arrived at Romsey Station one bright May afternoon, and found the gray horses waiting to carry them to the old house. How sad and strange it seemed to be coming home without Lola! She had always been their companion in such journeys, and her eager face and glad young voice, on the alert to recognise the first familiar points of the landscape, hill-top, or tree, or cottage that indicated home, had given an air of gaiety to every-day life.