Perhaps it was well that Mrs. Nevill Tyson took things so lightly,

otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her surroundings at

Thorneytoft. That hideous old barrack stared with all the uncompromising

truculence of bare white stone on nature that smiled agreeably round it

in lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an

impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own

very respectable fancy. The result was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak

was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with

horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge

lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you

came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax-flowers. What with antique

heraldry and utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no

place there for anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs. Nevill Tyson;

unless, indeed, her figure served to give the finishing touch to the

ridiculous medley.

The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs. Wilcox if

anything could. Mrs. Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp and fresh and

cheerful in her widow's dress. Tyson rather liked Mrs. Wilcox than

otherwise (perhaps because she was a little afraid of him and showed it);

he noticed with relief that his mother-in-law was beginning to look

almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact

that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of color.

He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds with an air of genial

worldliness. There was something about Mrs. Wilcox that evaded the touch

of sorrow; but from certain things--food, clothes, furniture--she seemed

to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human

tragedy. She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and a drawing-room

"without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know--not so

much as a flower-pot or a basket-table"--weighed heavily on her happy

soul. Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the

house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped

so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her

faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it--for a young bride, you know--just a

little--a little triste?" And being more than a little afraid of her

son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her

idea. Tyson said he didn't care to spend money on a place like

Thorneytoft; he didn't know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed

anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan

Cain, and he might go abroad again, or he might take a flat in town for

the season. And at the mention of a flat in town all Mrs. Wilcox's

beautiful beliefs came back to her unimpaired. A flat in town, and a

house in the country that you can afford to look down upon--what more

could you desire?




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