"Why shouldn't I come too? I'll wait at the lodge. She might like to ride home. She can sit anything—with any saddle. I taught her."
"Well—perhaps," said Meynell dubiously. And they went on together.
Presently Sandford Abbey emerged above the road, on a rising ground—a melancholy, dilapidated pile; and they struck into a long and neglected evergreen avenue leading up to it. At the end of the avenue there was an enclosure and a lodge, with some iron gates. A man saw them, and came out to the gate.
"Sir Philip's gone abroad, sir," he said, affably, when he saw them.
"Shall I take your card?"
"Thank you. I prefer to leave it at the house," said Meynell shortly, motioning to him to open the gate. The man hesitated, then obeyed. The Rector went up the drive, while Stephen turned back a little along the road, letting his horse pasture on its grassy fringe. The lodge keeper—sulky and puzzled—watched him a few moments and then went back into the house.
* * * * *
The Rector paused to reconnoitre as he came in sight of the house. It was a strange, desolate, yet most romantic spot. Although, seen from the road and the stream, it seemed to stand on an eminence, it was really at the bottom of a hill which encircled it on three sides, and what with its own dilapidation, its broken fences and gates, the trees which crowded about it, and the large green-grown pond in front of it, it produced a dank and sinister impression. The centre of the building, which had evidently been rebuilt about 1700, to judge from its rose-red brick, its French classical lunettes, its pedimented doors and windows, and its fine perron, was clearly the inhabited portion of the building. The two wings of much earlier date, remains of the old Abbey, were falling into ruin. In front of one a garage had evidently been recently made, and a motor was standing at its door. To the left of the approaching spectator was a small deserted church, of the same date as the central portion of the Abbey, with twin busts of William and Mary still inhabiting a niche above the classical entrance, and marking the triumph of the Protestant Succession over the crumbling buildings of the earlier faith. The windows of the church were boarded up and a few tottering tombstones surrounded it.
No sign of human habitation appeared as the Rector walked up to the door. A bright sunshine played on the crumbling brick, the small-paned windows, the touches of gilding in the railings of the perron; and on the slimy pond a few ducks moved to and fro, in front of a grass-grown sun-dial. Meynell walked up to the door, and rang.
The sound of the bell echoed through the house behind, but, for a while, no one came. One of the lunette windows under the roof opened overhead; and after another pause the door was slowly opened a few inches by a man in a slovenly footman's jacket.
"Very sorry, sir, but Sir Philip is not at home."