“Not very—about eighty or a hundred years old,” she replied. “It was originally just a sort of shooting-box—for our family has owned land about here for longer than that—and then my great-uncle took it into his head to enlarge it and make it his home. Grimsthorpe House is older; it was originally a large farmhouse—indeed it is not, to look at, much better than that now, though the grounds are extensive.”
We had crossed the moor by this time, and the rest of the way was along a more sheltered road bordered with trees, and here and there a glimpse of cultivated fields, altogether a different kind of landscape, more like what I was accustomed to at my own home, and a few minutes more brought us to the entrance of the Manor-house as the Wynyards’ place was now called.
As we passed through the lodge-gates, Isabel leant towards me and whispered—
“The Grim House is half-a-mile farther on, on the edge of another part of the moor.”
Her father was standing at the front door to receive us. His welcome was most cordial and courtly, but I felt even more strongly than before that it would be very difficult for me to be at ease with him; and so I said, in other words, to Isabel when we were alone in the room she had taken me up to. A charming room it was, with windows on two sides, from one of which a peep of the moorland, with rising ground in the distance, was to be had, as Isabel pointed out to me.
“Yes,” I said, as I threw myself into a tempting arm-chair, “it is all delightful; only, Isabel, I do wish I didn’t feel so shy of your father!”
Isabel laughed.
“I can’t understand it,” she said. “I mean, I can’t understand your feeling shy of him. He is so exceedingly kind and gentle. At the same time—” she hesitated.
“What?” I asked quickly.
“I could understand,” she replied, “feeling afraid of him if one had done anything wrong—more afraid than if he were severe. When I was a small child and got into scrapes, as all children do sometimes, his look of almost perplexed distress made me feel worse, far worse, than if he had scolded me in a commonplace way.”