'I did not think Bessie was so morbid,' said Ida, laughing. 'No, I am not one of those whom the gods love. I am made of very tough material, or I should hardly have lived till now. I see before me a perspective of lonely, loveless old age—finishing in a governess' almshouse. I hope there are almshouses for governesses.
'Nobody will pity your loneliness or lovelessness,' retorted Brian, 'for they will both be your own fault.'
She blushed, looking dreamily across the dark-gray river to the level shores beyond—the low meadows—gentle hills in the back-ground—the wooded slopes of Weybridge and Chertsey. If this speaker, whose voice dropped to so tender a tone, had been like the Brian of her imaginings—if he had looked at her with the dark eyes of Sir Tristram's picture, how differently his speech would have affected her! As it was, she listened with airy indifference, only blushing girlishly at his compliment, and wondering a little if he really admired her—he the owner of that glorious old Abbey—the wealthy head of the house of Wendover—the golden fish for whom so many pretty fishers must have angled in days gone by.
'Did you stay at The Knoll all the time,' she inquired, her thoughts having flown back to Kingthorpe; 'or at the Abbey?'
'At The Knoll. It is ever so much livelier, and my cousins like to have me with them.'
'Naturally. But I wonder you did not prefer living in that lovely old house of yours. To occupy it must seem like living in the Middle Ages.'
'Uncommonly. One is twelve miles from a station, and four from post-office, butcher, and baker. Very like the Middle Ages. There is no gas even in the offices, and there are as many rats behind the wainscot as there were Israelites in Egypt. All the rooms are draughty and some are damp. No servant who has not been born and bred on the estate will stay more than six months. There is a deficient water supply in dry summers, and there are three distinct ghosts all the year round. Extremely like the Middle Ages.'
'I would not mind ghosts, rats, anything, if it were my house' exclaimed
Ida, enthusiastically. 'The house is a poem.'
'Perhaps; but it is not a house; in the modern sense of the word, that is to say, which implies comfort and convenience.'
Ida sighed, deeply disgusted at this want of appreciation of the romantic spot where she had dreamed away more than one happy summer noontide, while the Wendover children played hide-and-seek in the overgrown old shrubberies.