Page 108 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

I should hold it tight.’
‘I think one ought to be liberal,’ Mildred argued gently.
‘We’ve always been so, even from the earliest times.’
‘Ah well,’ said Isabel, ‘you’ve made a great success of it; I
don’t wonder you like it. I see you’re very fond of crewels.’
When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after lun-
cheon, seemed to her a matter of course that it should be
a noble picture. Within, it had been a good deal modern-
ized—some of its best points had lost their purity; but as
they saw it from the gardens, a stout grey pile, of the softest,
deepest, most weather-fretted hue, rising from a broad, still
moat, it affected the young visitor as a castle in a legend.
The day was cool and rather lustreless; the first note of au-
tumn had been struck, and the watery sunshine rested on
the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, washing them, as
it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache of antiq-
uity was keenest. Her host’s brother, the Vicar, had come to
luncheon, and Isabel had had five minutes’ talk with him—
time enough to institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism
and give it up as vain. The marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh
were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural countenance, a
capacious appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laugh-
ter. Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin that before
taking orders he had been a mighty wrestler and that he
was still, on occasion—in the privacy of the family circle
as it were—quite capable of flooring his man. Isabel liked
him—she was in the mood for liking everything; but her
imagination was a good deal taxed to think of him as a
source of spiritual aid. The whole party, on leaving lunch,

108 The Portrait of a Lady