Lord Wolverhampton had been known to say more than once among his intimate friends, that a step in the peerage would to him prove a ruinous boon; and that to keep his head above water, difficult as an Earl, would be impossible were that honest head overweighted by the strawberry-leaved coronet of a Marquis. Such expensive promotion was, however, unlikely, for High Tor now sent forth no legislators to the more stirring of the Houses of Parliament. Some two years before, Lord Harrogate had been returned for a west-country borough, and had earned some praise and much good-will during the brief tenure of his seat. But the session came to a close, and with it the corporate life of the moribund House of Commons; and the Earl could not bring himself again to face the costly struggle of a contested election, even on behalf of a son so promising as his heir.
Thus the fine old house of High Tor, though lacking no adjuncts or appliances that should appertain to the mansion of a plain country gentleman who happened to have a handle to his name (such was the Earl’s favourite way of describing himself among those who knew him well, though it may be doubted whether any patrician in Europe cherished in secret a stronger sentiment of family pride), was not kept up with quite so ostentatious a lavishness as the neighbouring dwelling of Carbery, the red gables of which gleaming in the westering sun, never met Lord Wolverhampton’s eyes without suggesting the remembrance that it had been built and, till recently, owned by a De Vere.
There was space enough and to spare in the picturesque old mansion; and the chamber which had been assigned to Ethel Gray, and which had been formerly tenanted by that Miss Grainger whose desertion of her post as governess to try the experiment of wedded life we have heard the Countess deplore, and which was next to the great rambling school-room, commanded a noble prospect over hill and dale, over wood and water. From the ivy-framed windows, in clear weather, Dartmoor might be seen for miles and leagues, rolling away in giant waves of purple heather and gray and green; while here and there rose up defiantly the naked crags, known locally as Tors, frowning like natural fortresses on the invader of the wilderness.
Nearer, the two parks were visible, with all their wealth of huge old trees and matchless turf, browsed by hereditary deer, that couched contentedly amid the tall fern that had screened the antlered herds for centuries past, and the red roof and gleaming vanes of stately Carbery, and the peaceful waters of its ornamental lake, in which the silver-white swans that floated there were imaged back as from the polished surface of a mirror. It was a pretty room this, wherein Miss Grainger, its last occupant, had passed perhaps the happiest years of her governess-life; and now it had received a new tenant in the person of Ethel Gray. A new tenant, but for how long? That was a question which Ethel asked herself, without being able to give a satisfactory answer to her own query. The school-house of High Tor, with the modest dwelling of its mistress, lay in ugly heaps of blackened ruin; and it must be long before the little flock of scholars could again be gathered together in any building large enough to hold them, and longer before the village instructress could have a home to replace that which the fire had made desolate. There were at the best of times no lodgings in High Tor fit for the abode of an educated girl such as Ethel, and now every house that remained unharmed was overcrowded by the burned-out inhabitants of those which the conflagration had swept away.
It so chanced, however, that on the very day following Ethel’s arrival the question as to the prolongation of her sojourn at High Tor House was conclusively settled. Lady Alice, a quick-witted impulsive child, came swiftly down-stairs to the room where her mother and sisters were sitting. ‘Pray, come, Maud!’ she said breathlessly; ‘Gladys, you come too; and you, mamma. It’s worth while, indeed it is, only to listen for a moment!’
‘What is to be listened to?’ asked the Countess, amused at the eager manner of her youngest child.
‘Miss Gray’s singing, her wonderful, wonderful singing!’ returned the child impetuously. ‘I heard it by accident as I passed the door of the school-room, where she is all alone at the piano; and I could hardly tear myself away that I might tell you not to lose the treat.’
The Countess laughed good-humouredly.
‘All Alice’s geese are swans,’ she said; ‘and I am too old to climb so many stairs on the strength of this young lady’s recommendation. You are young, Maud, yourself, and I see you cannot resist the temptation; nor you either, Gladys.’
And indeed the two elder of the Ladies De Vere had allowed themselves to be convinced, or at least rendered compliant, by the pleading eyes and the energetic ‘Do come, please,’ of their child-sister. It was some little time before they returned.