Back from these meadows lies the long low hill which slopes downward to the east, and loses itself in illimitable woods. Up here on its summit is the little village of Steyne—only a church, with a square grey tower, a vicarage smothered in dark ivy, and two or three cottages. Farther along the great bank you come to the woods of Ormond Place; and right in the centre of them, in a great clearance visible for miles round, stands, fronting the river and the broad valley and the far landscape, the house in which Harry Ormond, Marquis of Knottingley, died.
It is a modern house, large, roomy, and stately, with oval-roofed greenhouses breaking the sharp descent of the walls to the ground; a house so tall and well-placed as to overlook the great elms in the park, which, on the other side of the broad and banked-up lawn, slopes down into the valley. As the red sun rises over the purple fog, it catches the pale front of the house, and sheds over it a glimmer of gold. The snow gleams cold and yellow on the evergreens, on the iron railings of the park, on the lawn where it is crossed and recrossed with a network of rabbits' footprints. Finally, as the sun masters the eastern vapours, and strikes with a wintry radiance on the crimson curtains inside the large windows (and they have on this morning a wanner light flickering upon them from within), Ormond Place, all white and gold, shines like a palace of dreams, raised high and clear over that spacious English landscape that lies cold and beautiful along the noblest of English rivers.
There was life and stir in Ormond Place this morning. The carriage-drive had been swept; the principal rooms in the house stripped of their chintz coverings; great fires lit; the children of the lodge dressed in their smartest pinafores; the servants in new liveries; harness, horses, carriages, and stables alike polished to the last degree. The big fires shone in the grates, and threw lengthening splashes of soft crimson on the thick carpets and up the palely-decorated walls. The sleeping palace had awoke, and the new rush of life tingled in its veins.
About twelve o'clock in the forenoon the carriage that had been sent to Corchester Station returned with two occupants inside. The children at the lodge, drawn up in line, bobbed a curtsey as they stared wonderingly at the carriage-window, where they saw nothing. A few minutes afterwards Annie Brunel, pale a little, and dressed entirely and simply in black, walked into her father's house between the servants, who were unconsciously trying to learn their future fate in the expression of her face. And if they did not read in that face a calm forbearance, a certain sad sympathy and patience, they had less penetration than servants generally have.
She entered one of the rooms—a great place with panelled pillars in the centre, and a vague vision of crystal and green leaves at the farther end—and sate down in one of the chairs near the blazing fire. It was not a moment of triumph—it was a moment of profound, unutterable sadness. The greatness of the place, the strange faces around her, increased the weight of loneliness she felt. And then all the reminiscences of her mother's life were present to her, and she seemed to have established a new and strange link between herself and her. It seemed as if the great chasm of time and circumstance had been bridged over, and that in discovering her mother's house, and the old associations of these bygone years, she should have discovered her also, and met the kindly face she once knew. If Annie Napier had walked into the room just then, and laid her hand on her daughter's shoulder, I do not think the girl would have been surprised.
"Was my mother ever in this house?" she asked of Mr. Cayley, not noticing that he was still standing with his hat in his hand.
"Doubtless. She was married in that little church we passed."
"And instead of spending her life here in comfort and quiet, he let her go away to America, and work hard and bitterly for herself and me."
Mr. Cayley said nothing.
"Do you know anything of her life here? How long she stayed? What were her favourite rooms? Where she used to sit?"