And the real dawn was approaching also, the true Aurora, ever fresh and pure, bathed in her silver dews. There are engines hurrying towards Wenderholme, through the beautiful quiet lanes and between the peaceful fields; and the gray early light shows the road to the eager drivers and their galloping steeds, and the breath of the pure morning fans the brows of the men who sit in dark uniforms, helmeted, perilously on those rocking chariots.
But the old house is past any help of theirs! The floors have fallen one after another. All the accumulated wood is burning together on the ground-floor now: in the hall, where Reginald Stanburne's portrait hung; in the dining-room, where, a few hours before, the brilliant guests had been sumptuously entertained; in the drawing-room, where the ladies sat after dinner in splendor of diamonds and fine lace. Every one of these rooms is a focus of ardent heat—a red furnace, terrible, unapproachable. The red embers will blacken in the daylight, under the unceasing streams from the fire-engines, and heaps of hissing charcoal will fill the halls of Wenderholme!
But the walls are standing yet—the brave old walls! Even the carving of the front is not injured. The house exists still, or the shell of it—the ghost of old Wenderholme, its appearance, its eidolon!
I know who laments this grievous misfortune most. It is not John Stanburne: ever since that child of his was known to be in safety, he has been as gay as if this too costly spectacle had been merely a continuation of the fireworks. It is not Lady Helena: she is very busy, has been very busy all night, going this way and that, and plaguing the people with contradictory orders. She is much excited—even irritated—but she is not sad. Wenderholme was not much to her; she never really loved it. If a country house had not been a necessity of station, she would have exchanged Wenderholme for a small house in Belgravia, or a tiny hotel in Paris.
But old Mrs. Stanburne grieved for the dear old house that had been made sacred to her by a thousand interests and associations. There was more to her in the rooms as they had been, than there was either to Lady Helena or to the proprietor himself. She had dreaded in silence the proposed changes and restorations, and this terrible destruction came upon her like the blow of an eternal exclusion and separation. The rooms where her husband had lived with her, the room he died in, she could enter never more! So she sat alone in her sadness, looking on the ruin as it blackened gradually in the morning, and her spirits sank low within her, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
CHAPTER XXX.
UNCLE JACOB'S LOVE AFFAIR.
The fire at Wenderholme was known all over the country the same morning, so the people who had been asked to the presentation of colors stayed away. The colors were given almost without ceremony, and the men came back to Sootythorn.