"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 luncheon, it seemed to her a matter of course that it should be a noble picture. Within, it had been a good deal modernised—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 weatherfretted 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 昀rst note of autumn 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 antiquity was keenest. Her host＇s brother, the Vicar,had come to luncheon, and Isabel had had 昀ve 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 昀gure, a candid, natural countenance, a capacious appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laughter. 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 昀ooring 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, went to walk in the grounds; but Lord Warburton exercised some ingenuity in engaging his least familiar guest in a stroll apart from the others.