"Well said, young man. The county can boast of finer houses by the score, but what are the families who live in them? Mushrooms--mere mushrooms in comparison with the Denisons. We might have been ennobled centuries ago had we chosen to accept a title. But the Denisons always thought themselves above such gewgaws."
"Was it not to the same purport, sir, that Colonel Denison answered James the Second when his Majesty offered him a patent of nobility on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne?"
"Ah--ha! your reading has been to some purpose," said the old man, with a dry chuckle. "That's the colonel's portrait over there in the left-hand corner. They used to tell me that I was something like him when I was a young spark."
Evidently he was pleased. He rubbed his lean, chilly fingers together, and fell into another reverie. Conroy glanced round. Ella was sitting at her little work-table busy with her crewels. What a sweet picture she made in the young man's eyes as she sat there in her grey dress, with the rich coils of her chestnut hair bound closely round her head, and an agate locket set in gold suspended from her neck by a ribbon, in which was a portrait of her dead mother. Not knowing that Conroy was gazing at her, her eyes glanced up from her work and encountered his. Next moment the long lashes hid them again, but the sweet carnation in her cheeks betrayed that she had been taken unawares.
Then Gilbert Denison spoke again. "There's something about you, young man," he said, "that seems to wake in my mind an echo of certain old memories which I thought were dead and buried for ever. Whether it's in your voice, or your eyes, or in the way you carry your head, or in all of them together, I don't know. Very likely what I mean exists only in my own imagination: I sometimes think I'm getting into my dotage. What do you say your name is?" he asked abruptly.
"Conroy, sir. Edward Conroy."
Mr. Denison shook his head. "I never knew any family of that name."
"The Conroys have been settled in North Devon for the last three hundred years."
"Never heard of 'em. But that's no matter. As I said before, there's something about you that comes home to me and that I like, though I'll be hanged if I know what it is, and I've no doubt I'm an old simpleton for telling you as much. Anyhow, you may take what sketches of the place you like. You have my free permission for that. And if you're not above dining off boiled mutton--we are plain folk here now--you may find your way back to this room at five sharp, and there will be a knife and fork ready for you. Why not?"
The interview was over. Ella conducted Conroy into another room, and then rang the bell. "There must be some magic about you," she said, with a smile, "to have charmed my uncle as you have. You don't know what a rarity it is for him to see a fresh face at Heron Dyke."