"It seems to me to be just the thing, Mary," he was saying--for he never called her by her double name, but "Mary" simply. "Only four miles from Stilborough on the Loughton road; which will be within an easy distance of your father's home and of Sir Richard's. It was by the merest chance I heard this morning that the Wests were going; and we can secure it at once if we will, before it goes into the market."
Miss Castlemaine knew the house by sight; she had passed it many a time in her drives, and seen it nestling away amid the trees. It was called by rather a fanciful name--Raven's Priory.
"It is not to be let, you say, William; only bought."
"Only bought. There will be, I presume, no difficulty made to that by the authorities."
He spoke with a smile. She smiled too. Difficulty!--with the loads of wealth that would be theirs some time! They might well laugh at the idea.
"Only that--that it is uncertain how long we may require to live in it," she said, with a slight hesitation. "I suppose that--some time----"
"We shall have to leave it for my father's home. True. But that, I trust, may be a long while off. And then we could re-sell Raven's Priory."
"Yes, of course. It is a nice place, William?"
"Charming," he replied with enthusiasm. For, of course, all things, the proposed residence included, were to him the hue of couleur-de-rose.
"I have never been inside it," she observed.