It was curious to mark how the same expression of sternness and decision about the lips and lower part of the face, which was so remarkable in their descendants, ran through the long row of ancestral portraits.  You saw it—­now, beneath the half-raised visor of Sir Malise, surnamed Poing-de-fer, who went up the breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder with strong King Richard—­now, yet more grimly shadowed forth, under the cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic, whom, they say, the great Earl of Warwick trusted as his own right hand—­now, softened a little, but still distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince Rupert’s aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness—­now, contrasting strangely with the elaborately powdered peruke and delicate lace ruffles of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand, the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and the deadliest rapier at the court of good Queen Anne.  Nay, you could trace it in the features of many a fair Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic attraction of their melting eyes.

On the sunny south side, looking across the flower-garden, were Lady Catharine Livingstone’s rooms, where, diligent as Matilda and her maidens, in summer by the window, in winter by the fire; the pale chatelaine sat over her embroidery.  What rivers of tapestry must have flowed from under those slender white fingers during their ceaseless toil of twenty years!

The good that she did in her neighborhood can not be told.  She was kind and hospitable, too, to her female guests, in her own haughty, undemonstrative way; nevertheless, the wives and daughters of the squirearchy regarded her with great awe and fear.  Perhaps she felt this, though she could not alter it, and the sense of isolation may have deepened the shades on her sad face.  She had only one thing on earth to centre her affections on, and that one she worshiped with a love stronger than her sense of duty; for, since his father died, she had never been able to check Guy in a single whim.

When he had a hunting-party in the house, she sometimes would not appear for days; but, however early he might start for the meet, I do not think he ever left his dressing-room without his mother’s kiss on his cheek.  She knew, as well as any one, how recklessly her son rode; nothing but his science, coolness, and great strength in the saddle could often have saved him from some terrible accident.  Many times, in the middle of the day’s sport, the thought has come across me piteously of that poor lady, in her lonely rooms, trembling, and I am very sure praying, for her darling.

On the opposite side of the court were Guy’s own apartments:  first, what was called by courtesy his study—­an armory of guns and other weapons, a chaos e rebus omnibus et quibusdam aliis, for he never had the faintest conception of the beauty of order; then came the smoking-room, with its great divans and scattered card-tables; then Livingstone’s bed-room and dressing-room.