A second life, a soul anew!
My dark Rosaleen!”
CHAPTER IV
IN THE WOODS OF ALTHORPE
ALTHORPE, called in Domesday Books “Ollethorp,”—and held before the Conquest, as the freehold of Tosti and Snorterman,—had been the home of the Spencers since the days of Henry the Seventh, when one John Catesby, second son of John Catesby of Legus Ashby, sold it to John Spencer, Esquire, son of William Spencer of Wormleighton, in Warwickshire, descended from the younger branch of the Despencers, anciently Earls of Gloucester and Winchester, and still more remotely from Ivo, Viscount Constantine, who married Emma, daughter of Alan of Brittany, before the Conquest—coming, therefore, by blood from one of the great feudal lords of France.
Althorpe House was built of freestone, in the form of the letter H, the two long wings joined by a central building in which was the main entrance facing south. It stood in a beautiful spot, level and well wooded. The old gatehouse, remnant of the feudal strength of Althorpe, had once been surrounded by a moat, but that had long since run dry and was overgrown with turf as smooth as velvet. The long avenues of elms and beeches and limes ran from it to the very doors of the earl’s house, and about it lay the park, enfiladed by those avenues of stately trees, while beyond were the meadows—in the old time it was said that there were eight acres of meadowland and two of thornwood in one small portion of the freehold of Ollethorp—and now the great domain stretched out on every hand, beautified by nature and by art.
It was in the woods of the park that Lady Betty and her attendant, Alice Lynn, walked on the morning after her interview with her father. It was too threatening to set out upon the journey to Newmarket, so they strolled on the outskirts of the earl’s domain. Both girls were cloaked and hooded and prepared for rain and, indeed, more than once there was the sharp pattering of drops on the thick foliage overhead. They did not hasten their steps, for neither of them feared the elements, and Lady Betty really feared nothing greatly, being a high-spirited and daring young creature who loved adventure well. A fresh breeze began to blow, rustling the leaves, and the branches swayed and creaked above them, a trellis-work of wavering green through which the gray sky blinked occasionally. To the left was a coppice, black with shadows; before them, here and there, a wide vista of open fields showed the grass rippling in a thousand waves; and again the tree-tops that seemed to touch the long, ragged clouds scudding so low, heavy with moisture and torn by wind. And the same wind—grown caressing—tossed the soft locks of Lady Betty’s hair into little curls about her face under the yellow bird’s-eye hood.
“What have you there, Alice?” she asked, as the girl stooped and peeped into a patch of grass growing in an opening between the trees.