The things we do!

My wife and our
hostess skipped into the carriage, and began to talk freely as the
lodge-gates closed after us. Would we be lords of such a place under the
penalty of living in it? We agreed that the little angle of earth called
Fairoaks was dearer to us than the clumsy Newcome-pile of Tudor masonry.
The house had been fitted up in the time of George IV. and the
quasi-Gothic revival. We were made to pass through Gothic dining-rooms,
where there was now no hospitality,--Gothic drawing-rooms shrouded in
brown hollands, to one little room at the end of the dusky suite, where
Lady Clara sate alone, or in the company of the nurses and children. The
blank gloom of the place had fallen upon the poor lady. Even when my wife
talked about children (good-natured Madame de Moncontour vaunting ours as
a prodigy) Lady Clara did not brighten up! Her pair of young ones was
exhibited and withdrawn. A something weighed upon the woman. We talked
about Ethel's marriage. She said it was fixed for the new year, she
believed.


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