But the
whitewashed walls, the crow-step gables, and the quaint Scots baronial
turrets gave it a perfection to the eye like a house in a dream. To
Alice, accustomed to the vulgarity of suburban villas with Italian
campaniles, a florid lodge a stone's throw from the house, darkened too
with smoke and tawdry with paint, this old-world dwelling was a patch of
wonderland. Her eyes drank in the beauty of the place--the great blue
backs of hill beyond, the acres of sweet pasture, the primeval woods.
"Is this Glenavelin?" she cried. "Oh, what a place to live in!"
"Yes, it's very pretty, dear." And Lady Manorwater, who possessed half a
dozen houses up and down the land, patted her guest's arm and looked
with pleasure on the flushed girlish face.
Two hours later, Alice, having completed dressing, leaned out of her
bedroom window to drink in the soft air of evening. She had not brought
a maid, and had refused her hostess's offer to lend her her own on the
ground that maids were a superfluity. It was her desire to be a very
practical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet she
had taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent many
minutes before the glass. Looking at herself carefully, a growing
conviction began to be confirmed--that she was really rather pretty.
She had reddish-brown hair and--a rare conjunction--dark eyes and
eyebrows and a delicate colour.
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