This country was not so lovely as the Forest.  It had only the beauty of high culture.  Human habitations were too wide-scattered, and the trees—­there were no very great trees, nor any blue glimpses of the sea.  Nevertheless, when the carriage turned into the domain at a pretty rustic lodge, the overarching gloom of an avenue of limes won Bessie’s admiration, and a few fir trees standing in single grace near the ruins of the abbey, which they had to pass on their way to the house, she found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest.  The western sun was still upon the house itself.  The dusk-tiled mansard roof, pierced by two rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their blackness.  Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall, where the foot rang on the bare, polished boards, and ten generations of Fairfaxes, successive dwellers in the grand old house, looked down from the walls.  It was not lighted except by the sunset, which filled it with a warm and solemn glow.

Numerous servants appeared, amongst them a plump functionary in blue satinette and a towering cap, who curtseyed to Elizabeth and spoke some words of real welcome:  “I’m right glad to see you back, Miss Fairfax; these arms were the first that held you.”  Bessie’s impulse was to fall on the neck of this kindly personage with kisses and tears, but her grandfather’s cool tone intervening maintained her reserve: 

“Your young mistress will be pleased to go to her room, Macky.  Your reminiscences will keep till to-morrow.”

Macky, instantly obedient, begged Miss Fairfax to “come this way,” and conducted her through a double-leaved door that stood open to the inner hall, carpeted with crimson pile, like the wide shallow stairs that went up to the gallery surrounding the greater hall.  On this gallery opened many doors of chambers long silent and deserted.

“The master ordered you the white suite,” announced Macky, ushering Elizabeth into the room so called.  “It has pretty prospects, and the rooms are not such wildernesses as the other state-apartments.  The eldest unmarried lady of the family always occupied the white suite.”

A narrow ante-room, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and off it a sleeping-closet for her maid,—­this was the private lodging accorded to the new daughter of the house.  Bessie gazed about, taking in a general impression of faded, delicate richness, of white and gold and sparse color, in elegant, antiquated taste, like a boudoir in an old Norman chateau that she had visited.