"We've always been so, even from the earliest times." "Ah well," said Isabel, "you've made a great success of it; I don't wonder you like it.

I see you're very fond of crewels." When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after luncheon, it seemed to her a matter of course that it should be a noble picture.

Within, it had been a good deal modernised--some of its best points had lost their purity; but as they saw it from the gardens, a stout grey pile, of the softest, deepest, most weather-fretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it affected the young visitor as a castle in a legend.

The day was cool and rather lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck, and the watery sunshine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, washing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache of antiquity was keenest.

Her host's brother, the Vicar, had come to luncheon, and Isabel had had five minutes' talk with him--time enough to institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism and give it up as vain.