The windows on all sides were long and many-mullioned; the roof lines broken up by dormer lights of the same pattern. The apex stones of these dormers, together with those of the gables, were surmounted by grotesque figures in rampant, passant, and couchant variety. Tall octagonal and twisted chimneys thrust themselves high up into the sky, surpassed in height, however, by some poplars and sycamores at the back, which showed their gently rocking summits over ridge and parapet. In the corners of the court polygonal bays, whose surfaces were entirely occupied by buttresses and windows, broke into the squareness of the enclosure; and a far-projecting oriel, springing from a fantastic series of mouldings, overhung the archway of the chief entrance to the house.
As Mr. Swancourt had remarked, he had the freedom of the mansion in the absence of its owner. Upon a statement of his errand they were all admitted to the library, and left entirely to themselves. Mr. Swancourt was soon up to his eyes in the examination of a heap of papers he had taken from the cabinet described by his correspondent. Stephen and Elfride had nothing to do but to wander about till her father was ready.
Elfride entered the gallery, and Stephen followed her without seeming to do so. It was a long sombre apartment, enriched with fittings a century or so later in style than the walls of the mansion. Pilasters of Renaissance workmanship supported a cornice from which sprang a curved ceiling, panelled in the awkward twists and curls of the period. The old Gothic quarries still remained in the upper portion of the large window at the end, though they had made way for a more modern form of glazing elsewhere.
Stephen was at one end of the gallery looking towards Elfride, who stood in the midst, beginning to feel somewhat depressed by the society of Luxellian shades of cadaverous complexion fixed by Holbein, Kneller, and Lely, and seeming to gaze at and through her in a moralizing mood. The silence, which cast almost a spell upon them, was broken by the sudden opening of a door at the far end.
Out bounded a pair of little girls, lightly yet warmly dressed. Their eyes were sparkling; their hair swinging about and around; their red mouths laughing with unalloyed gladness.
“Ah, Miss Swancourt: dearest Elfie! we heard you. Are you going to stay here? You are our little mamma, are you not—our big mamma is gone to London,” said one.
“Let me tiss you,” said the other, in appearance very much like the first, but to a smaller pattern.
Their pink cheeks and yellow hair were speedily intermingled with the folds of Elfride’s dress; she then stooped and tenderly embraced them both.
“Such an odd thing,” said Elfride, smiling, and turning to Stephen. “They have taken it into their heads lately to call me ‘little mamma,’ because I am very fond of them, and wore a dress the other day something like one of Lady Luxellian’s.”
These two young creatures were the Honourable Mary and the Honourable Kate—scarcely appearing large enough as yet to bear the weight of such ponderous prefixes. They were the only two children of Lord and Lady Luxellian, and, as it proved, had been left at home during their parents’ temporary absence, in the custody of nurse and governess. Lord Luxellian was dotingly fond of the children; rather indifferent towards his wife, since she had begun to show an inclination not to please him by giving him a boy.
All children instinctively ran after Elfride, looking upon her more as an unusually nice large specimen of their own tribe than as a grown-up elder. It had now become an established rule, that whenever she met them—indoors or out-of-doors, weekdays or Sundays—they were to be severally pressed against her face and bosom for the space of a quarter of a minute, and otherwise made much of on the delightful system of cumulative epithet and caress to which unpractised girls will occasionally abandon themselves.
A look of misgiving by the youngsters towards the door by which they had entered directed attention to a maidservant appearing from the same quarter, to put an end to this sweet freedom of the poor Honourables Mary and Kate.
“I wish you lived here, Miss Swancourt,” piped one like a melancholy bullfinch.
“So do I,” piped the other like a rather more melancholy bullfinch. “Mamma can’t play with us so nicely as you do. I don’t think she ever learnt playing when she was little. When shall we come to see you?”
“As soon as you like, dears.”
“And sleep at your house all night? That’s what I mean by coming to see you. I don’t care to see people with hats and bonnets on, and all standing up and walking about.”
“As soon as we can get mamma’s permission you shall come and stay as long as ever you like. Goodbye!”
The prisoners were then led off, Elfride again turning her attention to her guest, whom she had left standing at the remote end of the gallery. On looking around for him he was nowhere to be seen. Elfride stepped down to the library, thinking he might have rejoined her father there. But Mr. Swancourt, now cheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles, was still alone, untying packets of letters and papers, and tying them up again.
As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the object of her interest to justify her, as a proper young lady, to commence the active search for him that youthful impulsiveness prompted, and as,
