And yet after all there is grass in the Emerald Isle smoother, shorter, closer, and softer than any in England. Only in that case sheep have been the mowers. I know an island in a lake where they fatten in six weeks, and where it is perhaps unnecessary to say stand the ruins of an old monastery.
CHAPTER IV.
GRACE TELLS HER STORY.
Grace’s experiences of drawing-rooms in her own country had been considerable.
She had been acquainted from her childhood with immense apartments, commanding sea and land views. She knew the orthodox style of furniture which upholsterers sent in as a species of groundwork upon which individual fancy subsequently painted the form of its own especial idiosyncrasy. She had beheld acres of carpeting, hangings which were miracles of heaviness and expense, chairs first covered with green, or amber, or ponceau, or silver grey, to match the curtains, and then wrapped up in holland, to preserve their beauty intact, ponderous loo and sofa tables, everything as good as money could buy, and expected to last accordingly; these were some of the necessaries without which no drawing-room in a gentleman’s house could be considered orthodox; but when all such things had been provided, it was admissible to add such other elegances as personal taste might suggest.
Personal taste or family circumstances produced occasionally some very curious devices in the way of ornamentation. Relics from Pompeii would be the attraction of one home; carved temples, cedar-wood boxes, daggers with richly-ornamented handles, spoke in another of some male relatives who had crossed the sea, and brought back flotsam and jetsom with him. Dogs, parrots, flowers, depicted in wool on canvas, testified in many homes to the indefatigable industry of its female occupants; in rare cases, rare because the materials were for those days costly, beadwork in unlimited quantities charmed the beholder; occasionally old china, which would now fetch fabulous prices in London, adorned the chiffoniers, whatnots, and cabinets of persons who had none too much money to spare, whilst in almost all cases where there were young ladies, or even middle-aged, the open piano, the litter of music, often a harp or a guitar, spoke of the love of that talent which is bestowed so much more freely on Irish than English women.
All these rooms, and many others besides, Grace had been free of; rooms with a certain stately dignity about them, rooms connected with which she had many a pleasant childish and girlish memory, but a drawing-room like Mrs. Hartley’s was as far beyond her imagination as that other style of apartment generally and prudently unoccupied which obtains in the suburbs of London, and in the houses of all highly respectable and sober-minded middle class people throughout England generally.
Luxury in those days had not attained to the height to which it has since sprung. It has been reserved for the reign of her present Majesty to witness a more rapid transition from comparative simplicity of living, lodging, dressing, spending, to the wildest extravagance of expenditure in all ranks, than has ever occurred before at any era, or in any nation; and for this reason the decorations and furniture which seemed perfection to Grace Moffat, would no doubt appear extremely poor and commonplace if catalogued for the benefit of the reader.
In the nature of almost every woman there is, I suspect, a latent, cat-like love of things soft, bright, cosy, and there was something in the whole aspect of Mrs. Hartley’s drawing-room which appealed to this sense in Grace’s nature. She liked walking over the thick carpet; the white sheepskin hearthrug on which generally reposed a King Charles that hated Grace with a detestation she cordially reciprocated; the firelight reflected from mirrors, sparkling against lustres; the lovely water-colour drawings hanging on the walls; the delightful easy chairs; the statuettes; the flowers piled up in banks between the long French windows, and the conservatory filled with rare and beautiful plants; all these things were pleasant as they were novel to the rich widow’s visitor.
In Mrs. Hartley’s opinion, however, the very greatest ornament her room had ever held was Grace Moffat, and the admiration she always entertained for her guest was heightened as they entered the apartment together, by the new interest now attaching to her, as the older lady felt satisfied must be the case. Some misplaced affection, some love entanglement which she had kept secret until she could endure to keep silent no longer.
“Now sit down, dear, and tell me all about it; you prefer the low chair, I know,” began Mrs. Hartley; but Grace answered,—