“My mother talks of a house at Brighton,” said Vansittart. “She has a good many friends settled there, and the winter climate suits her.”
“I am sorry she should feel constrained to go away,” said Eve, looking ruefully round the spacious morning-room, with its three French windows opening on to a wide balcony, a room which could have swallowed up half the Homestead. “It seems as if I were turning her out. And I am sure there would have been ample room for both of us in this big house.”
“So I told her, love; but English mothers don’t take kindly to the idea of a joint ménage. She will come to us often as our guest, I have no doubt, but she insists upon giving up possession to you and me.”
They loitered in all the lower rooms, drawing-room and anteroom, library, billiard-room—an unpretentious country house, spread over a good deal of ground, roomy, airy, beautifully lighted, but boasting no art collections, no treasures of old books, unpretentiously furnished after the fashion of a century ago, and with only such modern additions as comfort required. The drawing-room would have appeared shabby to eyes fresh from London drawing-rooms; but the colouring was harmonious, and the room was made beautiful by the flowers on tables, chimney-piece, and cabinets.
“I dare say you would like to refurnish this room by-and-by,” said Vansittart.
“Not for worlds. I would not change one detail that can remind you of your childhood. I remember the drawing-room in Yorkshire, and how dearly I loved the sofas and easy-chairs—the glass cabinets of old blue china. It would grieve me to go back and see strange furniture in that dear old room; and I love to think that your eyes looked at these things when they were only on a level with that table”—pointing to a low table with a great bowl of roses upon it.
“Not my eyes alone, but my father’s and grandfather’s eyes have looked from yonder low level. I am glad you don’t mind the shabby furniture. I confess to a weakness for the old sticks.”
“Shabby furniture!” repeated Eve. “One would think you were going to marry a princess. Why, this house is a palace compared with the Homestead; and yet I have contrived to be happy at the Homestead.”
“Because Heaven has given you one of its choicest gifts—a happy disposition,” said Vansittart. “It is that sunny temperament which irradiates your beauty. It is not that tip-tilted little nose, so slender in the bridge, so ethereal in its upward curve, nor yet those violet eyes, which make you so lovely. It is the happy soul for ever singing to itself, like the lark up yonder in the fathomless blue.”
“I shouldn’t think you cared for me, if you didn’t talk nonsense sometimes,” answered Eve, gaily; “but it is a privilege to be happy, isn’t it? Sophy and I have had the same troubles to bear, but they have hurt her ever so much more than they hurt me. Jenny and I sometimes call her Mrs. Gummidge. I think it is because she has never left off struggling to be smart, never left off thinking that we ought to be on the same level as the county families; while Jenny and I gave up the battle at once, and confessed to each other frankly that we were poor and shabby, and the daughters of a scampish father. And so we have managed to be happy. I love to think that I am like Beatrice, and that I was born under a star that danced.”