Mrs. Mowbray laughed. "I suppose your eye finds beauty in the lines of the architecture."
"Are they beautiful?"
"People say so, my dear."
"But do you think they are?"
"My dear, I must confess to you, I never paid much attention to architecture. I never asked myself the question."
"I do not think there is any beauty about them," said Rotha; "but somehow I like to look at them. I like to look at them very much."
"Here is another cloister," said Mrs. Mowbray; "of Salisbury cathedral.
The arches and lines here are less severe. How do you like that?"
"Not half so well," Rotha answered, after making the comparison. "I think
Fountain's Abbey is beautiful, compared with this."
"It is called, I believe, one of the finest ruins in England. My dear, if you want to study architecture, I shall turn you over to Mr. Fergusson's book. It is in the corner stand in the breakfast room—two octavo volumes. There you can find all your questions answered."
Which Rotha did not however find to be the case, though Fergusson in after days was a good deal studied by her in her hours of leisure. For this evening it was enough, that she went to her room with the feeling that the world is very rich in things to be seen and things to be known; a vast treasure house of wonders and beauties and mysteries; which mysteries must yet have their hidden truth and solution, delightful to search for, delightful to find. Would she some day see the Alps? and what dreadful things cloisters and the life lived in them must have been! Her eye fell on her Russia leather bag, in which she had placed her Bible for safe keeping; and her thoughts went to the Bible. That told how people should live to serve God; and it was not by shutting themselves up in cloisters. How then? That question she deferred.