Priscilla was Mrs. Wyllard's maid, Cornish to the marrow, and a severe Primitive Methodist.
"Priscilla in Paris? No, I think not. She was so wretched in Italy. The very smell of the incense offended her."
"She will not be overpowered by incense in Paris nowadays. She is more likely to be offended by a new Age of Reason. However, if you think you can do without her—"
"I'm sure I can. We shall not be visiting, I suppose?"
"Hardly, I think. It is the dullest of dull seasons in Paris just now, and I had never a large visiting acquaintance in that city. I was too busy a man to go into society."
"You must have been a stoic to resist the temptations of Parisian society—the writers, the painters, singers, actors—all that is foremost and brightest in the intellectual world."
"There are circles and circles in Paris, as well as in London. I have been in Parisian assemblies that were eminently dull," said Wyllard.
They started from Penmorval after breakfast next morning, and were seated in the Dover mail at eight o'clock in the evening, after dining at the Grand Hotel. Dora was in excellent spirits. Change of scene had a brightening effect upon her mind, and she was very happy in the idea of Hilda and Bothwell's happiness. She had handed her cousin a cheque for seven hundred pounds, with which he was to open an account at the local bank. And then he had only to wait for Hilda to approve his choice, before he set to work with bricklayers and carpenters at improving a cottage into an Elizabethan Grange. That was his idea.
"We will have an Elizabethan Grange furnished with real Chippendale," he said. "Incongruous, but charming."
"Then be sure that very few of your windows are made to open," said Dora, laughing at his ardour, "if you want to be truly Elizabethan."