“Poor old Groombridge! it is hard not to have a son or even a nephew to leave it all to.”

“He likes the cousin very much,” said Rose.

“But isn’t Mark Molyneux going to be a priest?” said the young man, Billy, to Lady Rose.  “I heard the other day that he is in one of the Roman seminaries—­went there soon after he left Oxford.”

Edmund answered him.

“Groombridge told me he thought he would give that up.  He said he believed it was a fancy that would not last.”

“He did very well at Oxford,” said Rose, “and the Groombridges are devoted to him.  It is so good of them with all their old-world notions not to mind more his being a Roman Catholic.”

The talk was interrupted by the two men getting out to ease the horses on a steep part of the drive.

Rose’s own point of view that a young and earnest priest, even although, unfortunately, not an Anglican, might do much good in such a position as that of the master of Groombridge Castle, would certainly not have been understood by her two companions.

Meanwhile, in the second carriage, Molly was becoming more and more distracted from painful thoughts by the glory of the summer’s evening, and the historic interest of the Castle.  She felt at first disinclined to disturb the unusual silence of the lady beside her.  Certainly the principal tower of the Castle, in its dark red stone, looked uncommonly fine and commanding, and about it flew the martlets that “most breed and haunt” where the air is delicate.

The horse-chestnut leaves were breaking through their silver sheaths in points of delicate green, and daffodils and wild violets were thick in grass and ground ivy, while rabbits started away from within a few feet of the road.

But, although reluctant to break the silence, at last interest in the scene made Molly ask: 

“Do you know the date?”

“Oh, Norman undoubtedly,” said Mrs. Delaport Green; “the round towers, you know.  Round towers go back to almost any date.”

Molly was dissatisfied.  “You don’t know what reign it was built in?”

“Some time soon after the Conqueror; I think Tim did tell me all about it.  He looked it up in some book last night.”

As a matter of fact, the present Castle had been built under George III., and the towers would have betrayed the fact to more educated observers; while even Molly could see when they came close to the great mass of building that the windows and, indeed, all the decoration was of an inferior type of revived Gothic.  But, however an architect might shake his head at Groombridge, it was really a striking building, massive and very well disposed, and in an astonishingly fine position, commanding an immense view of a great plain on nearly three sides, while to the east was stretched the rest of the range of splendidly-wooded hills on the westerly point of which it was situated.  In the sweet, soft air many delicate trees and shrubs were developed as well as if they had been in quite a sheltered place.