Great Speculations. A Norfolk novelette, etc

Front matter

"SELECT" NOVELS. Crown 8vo, cloth, js. 6d. each. AT ALL BOOKSELLERS' AND BOOKSTALLS. By FLORENCE MAKETAT. THE HEIR PRESUMPTIVE. HER WORLD AGAINST A LIE THE HEARTOF JANE WARNER PEERESS AND PLAYER. UNDER THE LILIES & ROSES. FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS. MY OWN CHILD. I A BROKEN BLOSSOM. MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. By ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs. Pender Cudlip). HER SUCCESS. IENIFER. KATE VALLIANT. ALLERTON TOWERS. FRIENDS AND LOVERS. By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. MATED WITH A CLOWN. I MOLLIE DARLING. ONLY A VILLAGE MAIDEN. | SWEETHEART AND WIFE. By MRS. HOUSTOUN, Author of "Recommended to Mercy." BARBARA'S WARNING. By MRS. ALEXANDER FRASER. THE MATCH OF THE SEASON. | A FATAL PASSION. A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. By I.ZA DUFFUS-HARDY. ONLY A LOVE STORY. | NOT EASILY JEALOUS LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY. By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. POISONED ARROWS.

By MRS. LOVETT-CAMERON. IN A GRASS COUNTRY. | A DEAD PAST. A NORTH COUNTRY MAID. By DORA RUSSELL. By LADY VIOLET GRENVILLE OUT OF EDEN. KEITH'S WIRE. By NELLIE FORTESCUE HARRISON. Author of " So runs my dream." FOR ONE MAN'S PLEASURE. By EDMUND LEATHES. THE ACTOR'S WIFE. By HARRIETT JAY. A MARRUU-E OF CONVENIENCE. a ilorfolfe Jlobelrtte. BY GEEVILLE JOHN CHESTER, B.A. Author of "Julian Cloughton, or Lad-Life in Norfolk," "Aurelia, or The Close at Mixeter," "Evelyn Manwaring," etc. IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 31, SOUTHAMPTON STEEET, STEAND. 1886. [All rights reserved.} PRINTED BY KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELD AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

Preface

. As I have no doubt that my critics will pronounce the main incident upon which the ensuing Story hinges to be utterly improbable, if not impossible, I think it best to state at once that it actually occurred. G. J. C CONTENTS. CHAP. pAGE I. — Headingham, Civil . . . . 1 II. — Headingham, Ecclesiastical . . 9 III. — The Ladt of the High House . . 14 IV. — The Storming op the High House 23 V. — The Widow Welby makes Good her Position . . 30 VI. — The Widow is Autobiographical . 39 VII. — The Widow Captivates the Vicar . 47 VIII. — The Widow scores one against Parker 52 IX.— Table Talk 62 X. — What Headingham thought of the Widow 66 XI. — A Small Smoking Parti ... 77 XII. — Keziah Parker's Accounts are Settled ..... 87 XIII. — A Tea Party at the High House . 98 XIV. — The Widow Captivates Doctor Jollibox . . . . .

CONTENTS, VIII chap. PAQE XV. — The Widow Fascinates a Lawyer . 124 XVI. — The Widow's Great Speculation . 133 XVII.— The Kiss oe Judas . . . .138 XVIII. — Beatrice Tourelles . . . 143 XIX. — Leonora Grahame . . . .150 XX. — On the Thames Embankment . . 159 XXI. — A Bee in a Scotchman's Bonnet . 164 XXII. — Miss Hardwicke alters her Will . 178 XXIII. — The Consequences of a Telegram . 187 XXIV. — A Visitor for the Widow . . 196 XXV. — A Detective's Revelations . . 203 XXVI.— The Widow Unmasked ... 206 XXVII. — Miss Hardwicke makes her Confession 216 XXVIII. — Mr. Pole hampton's Investigation . 224 XXIX.— "Poor Harry" .... 232 XXX. — A Letter from the New World .

Chapter I. Headingham, Civil

Few if any little towns in all East Anglia have a more clean, cheerful and pleasant aspect than Heading ham in the county of Norfolk, although — as it stands far from any navigable river, has no trade of its own, and its market has dwindled down to three or four stalls in the market-place on Saturdays, and a mere fortnightly sale of a few sheep and hogs and an occasional bullock in the yard behind the " Eed Lion" — one is always impressed with a feeling of wonder that the place ever became a town at all. There is not so much as a scrap of an old castle, and the most diligent explorers of County records cannot assert that even the very smallest monastic cell ever stood within the confines of the parish. Yet Headingham shows no signs of decay. On the contrary, its aspect is that of a thoroughly well-to-do place, and the inhabitants, who for the most part are well-to-do and thoroughly respectable themselves, explain the mystery by saying that " it flourishes by its own respectability."

As it is pretty plain that it flourishes by nothing else, and as I have no better theory of my own to propound whereby to throw light on the phenomenon, I am content to suppose that such is indeed the case. Some few old and patriotic folks are, it is true, to be found, who, when partially muzzy with the fumes of the beer consumed in the tap of the " Hardwicke Arms," are wont to assert that " once upon a time Headingham had a trade of its own," and they found that assertion upon the fact of their remem bering a somewhat drunken and disreputable old fellow named Chaffers, who had a board over his door, which declared him to be " Eat Trap Maker to His late Majesty King George the Fourth." That, however, was now long ago, Chaffers has years since been trapped by Death himself, and the circumstance cannot be allowed to have any bearing upon the condition of the Headingham of to-day.

The parish of Headingham is of large extent, with out-lying farms extending to the edge of a vast heath, which, spite of Inclosure Acts, still surrounds the township upon more than two of its sides. The town proper, however, is composed of three main streets, which, wide to begin with, as they converge respectively from the Norwich, Lynn, and what, before railways, was the old London Boad, gradually widen until, like three rivers combining their waters to form a lake, they swell into a long, broad, and irregularly shaped market-place, in which (to follow HEADINGHAM, CIVIL. 3 up the lake simile) are two islands, an islet, and an eyot. The two islands, which are separated from each other by a narrow strait called " Batchelors' Alley," are composed, respectively, of a knot of red brick houses, comprising the " Brown Bear " public house, and seven or eight small shops, one of which— the one with a large bow-window — is tenanted by the principal hairdresser and barber of the place ; and of a large, flat-looking building, also of red brick, on the top of which smirks and gesticulates the figure of a very nearly nude female cast in lead.

Mr. Smoothall, the hairdresser, always informs strangers and country customers that this is " a statoo of Tipsy Carrie, and considered very chaste and classical by the connossiers." Further interrogated as to who " Tipsy Carrie " may be, he invariably replies that he is " no scholard to boast on hisself, but has always understood that she was one of the Nine Amusers," which answer, as the building in question in none other than the Assembly Eooms, in which are held the County Balls, has an air of appropriateness about it, which seldom fails to carry conviction to the mind of the questioner. By the poorer folks the figure is currently believed to be the effigy of an aunt of a former owner of the High House, of which more anon, who fell in love with the gardener, and who, having gone out of her mind for love, was found one fine morning in the kitchen garden, smelling at a large bunch of carrots and exclaim ing, " Laws ! what bootiful gilly-flowers !

" 1* This legend, however, I am sorry to have to confess, is " a fond thing, vainly invented," for the Squire in question (as I, who have personally examined his family tree, am ready to attest on oath) never had an aunt at all, and so she was certainly guiltless of any such eccentricities and aberrations ; and it has no further foundation than this, that at the time of the erection of the Assembly Eooms, now near eighty years ago, the then Squire presented the dilapidated statue of Terpsichore, which surmounted a battered pedestal in the garden of the High House, to the architect, who thereupon re-erected it over the chief entrance as an ornament highly appropriate to the festive uses to which his chef d'œuvre was designed. The islands being thus described, it is needful to explain that the islet is a circular building supported on Doric columns of wood painted drab colour, on which is a dome covered with lead and crowned by a statue of Justice with gilded scales and sword, with a gilt pocket-handkerchief tied tight over her eyes ; and the eyot is the town well, for Headingham being seated on the chalk and on a high table-land, water is at too great a depth for private pumps to be a frequent luxury.

On one side of the market-place, near Justice, and extending back from it, is the town pond, a shallow expanse of a greenish liquid ; and herein, each morning and evening, it is a sight worth seeing to watch the gambols of the town herd of horses, cows, and donkeys, as, under the surveillance of their own HEADINGHAM, CIVIL. 5 proper herdsman, duly hired in their behalf, they stop to drink on their way to and from the neigh bouring heath, upon which every parishioner of Headingham has the common right of pasturage from the Feast of our Lady to the Feast of St. Martin. All around the market-place and its various ramifications are the houses of the principal townsfolks, and for the most part very pretty dwellings they are — long, low, and built of red brick, or neatly white-washed, with charming old-fashioned walledin gardens behind.

Some of the houses are raised on a sort of causeway above the general level of the area, and many, whether private dwellings or shops, have projecting bowwindows. In front of some are trees, chiefly limes, kept cut so as to form a sort of screen; but before the " Eed Lion" is a fine branching sycamore, and before the " Hardwicke Arms " (these are both Blue inns) is a spreading chestnut. In front, moreover, of the " Green Dragon " (the Yellow hostelry) is a row of posts, and beneath them in the roadway the battered and partly charred remains of the parish stocks. One has, of course, to deplore some innovations upon all this old-fashioned picturesqueness and homeliness. Thus Mr. Simcox, the Congregationalist minister, has erected for himself a spic-and-span building of that meanest of all mean materials — which alone of all never improves by time, but goes on getting meaner and meaner to the end of the chapter — to wit, white brick.

And GREAT SPECULzi-TIONS. Mr. McSplint, the newly arrived Scotch medical practitioner, has painted the stucco front of his house a bright scarlet, with white window-frames and a green door. As, moreover, the red surface is intersected by white lines, intended to imitate the courses of mortar between bricks, the building looks so like a Noah's Ark, that if Noah (in vermilion), Ham (in brown), Shem (in yellow), and Japheth (in puce), with their respective spouses, were to escape from Mr. Goodchild's toy-shop over the road, and after rollicking about the market-place were to lose their way, they might easily mistake Mr. McSplint's house for their own proper habitation, and go in and claim a settlement. The chief mansion of all, however, is that of Mr. Donne, the lawyer, whose office is filled with tin boxes containing the title deeds of half the neigh bouring Squirearchy, and who, being to boot the Principal Official of the Venerable the Archdeacon of Walsingham, has a sort of odour of ecclesiastical propriety and respectability attaching to him, to which indeed he seems to lay claim by always dressing in rusty black, and wearing an extremely well-starched white cravat.

Mr. Donne has six stone posts, with iron chains between, in front of his house, and a flight of no less than three stone steps leads down from the causeway into the market-place, which is considered very aristocratic by his fellow townsmen, and he keeps the footway in front of his house and of the great wooden gates which lead HEADINGHAM, CIVIL. 7 into his stable-yard, so exquisitely gravelled and rolled, that there is imparted to it quite the character of private property, and passers-by often look on themselves in the light of intruders, and feel they are taking a liberty in walking upon their own rightful thoroughfare. Mr. Donne is an F.S.A., and has collections of coins, and fossils, and what not, and he reads papers at the meetings of the County Archæological Society, whereof is he a vice-president.

He is reported to come of an ancient stock, is believed to be very rich, and, although as bald as a coot, he affects much of the verve and vivacity of youth. Perhaps the next best house to that of Mr. Donne, unless, indeed, it be the County Bank, is that of Dr. Jollibox, an elderly physician of the old school, who stands especially high in the estimation of the numerous elderly ladies who by some mysterious attraction have made their home at Headingham. The doctor is a very cheery old fellow, does not believe in lowering his patients, and considers port wine, when old and good, the panacea for most of the ills to which human flesh is heir. If, however, in these days of Dr. Andrew Parsons and starvation diet, Dr. Jollibox is somewhat obsolete in his ideas and old-fashioned in his practice, it must be allowed that he is very advanced in his views of sanatory matters.

The doctor is great upon drainage, and ascribes most maladies to imperfect sewerage and bad smells. His bete noir,a.s will be seen hereafter, GREAT SPECULATIONS. 8 is the town pond, and the draining off of that stag nant and by no means odoriferous pool is one of the main objects of his life. The pretty white house covered with creepers, and with a tiny strip of garden in front, opposite to that of Dr. Jollibox, appertains to Mrs. Boldero, the relict of a rich yeoman farmer. She has no less than five fair, fat, and frolic-loving daughters, immense at lawn-tennis and picnics in summer, and at skating, dances, and church decoration in winter. These jolly girls and their mother are not considered quite comme il faut by the ladies of Headingham, and speaking generally, are not " visited " by them.

The ladies say " they must draw the line somewhere," and they have elected to draw it at the Bolderos. This is the more to be regretted because the Bolderos are very worthy people, kind to the poor, and full of the milk of human kindness. The widow, however, is quite able to hold her own, and the five girls re gret their isolation the less because the Headingham ladies altogether fail to keep those coarser animals — ■ the men — away from their house. Truth to tell, these young damsels are the terror of all the mothers of marriageable young men for twenty miles round. It will be a wonder if one of them, with her merry laugh and big blue eyes, does not catch a young squire, or, at all events, hook a curate. Mrs. Boldero's garden-parties are voted no end of fun, and sometimes even attract some of the young officers of dragoons from Norwich.

The worthy HE A DING HA M, ECCL E.SIA STICA L. 9 widow has the finest strawberries and the richest cream of any lady in " the Two Counties." Out on the Walsingham Eoad, on the line of that* celebrated "Way" which led to one of the most renowned places of English Mediæval pilgrimage — are two other mansions of sufficient importance to merit a few words of notice. One of these, known as " The Cottage," is surrounded by a beautiful garden, and belongs to an elderly spinster lady named Sampson. The other, a solid, red mansion, of forbidding aspect, with tall iron gates in front, is tenanted by the Eeverend Simeon Sapcote, Eector of Slusham-cum-Piddlecote. It might be thought that Mr. Sapcote ought to reside in one of those " consolidated " and well endowed parishes ; but the rector is very low church and very rich, and the diocese is the diocese of Norwich, so ordinary rules of ecclesiastical pro cedure do not apply.

Chapter II. Headingham, Ecclesiastical

Halfway down the market-place, between a public house and a basket shop, runs a narrow street, or rather lane, and at the bottom of this is a handsome pair of hammered iron gates, through which, at the end of an overarching avenue ,of limes, is seen GREAT SPEC ULA TION S. the noble tower of the parish church of Head ingham, which is dedicated under the joint names of two notable East Anglian Saints, St. Etheldreda, the Eoyal Abbess of Ely, and St. Edmund, King and Martyr ; and few churches, even in Norfolk,— the land par excellence of noble ecclesiastical buildings — can vie with it in beauty and grandeur. The Early Per pendicular tower is built of freestone quarried in Normandy and imported at vast expense into Norfolk ; the nave, transepts, chancel, and porches are constructed of flints squared with consummate skill, and wrought into elaborate patterns with white stone.

There is a range of no less than sixteen clearstory windows upon either side of the lofty nave, some of which contain fragments of the ancient glass. But after all the greatest glory of Headingham Church is the roof of the nave, and I am prepared to do battle with that learned and gallant upholder of West Country architecture, Dr. Edward A. Freeman, to produce a roof in his favourite Somersetshire equal to that of the Church of SS. Etheldreda and Edmund. Three tiers of spandrils full of intricate tracery are supported by as many tiers of angels with expanded wings, bearing the emblems of the Passion, and a fourth tier holding shields, and, English fashion, facing eastwards, occupies the centre of the roof, which, mind you, is high-pitched, and not nearly flat like those of the warm West Country.

The benefice of Headingham is a vicarage, the HE A DING HAM, ECCLESIASTICAL. 11 great tithes belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Eliborough, whose glorious and stupendous Minster is plainly visible in clear weather, over a vast ex panse of heath and cultivated fenland, upon the far horizon, from the top of the tower of the parish church. Many years since, however, in the jobbing times of the last century, the great tithes were leased out to the family of Pedgrift, who thus became to all intents and purposes lay-impro priators. The last of these, under this in defensible arrangement — an unfortunate legacy from the monastic system and from the subsequent policy of Harry VIII. — Mr. Gilbert Pedgrift, had been bred a lawyer, but he afterwards by the death of two or three relatives in succession became possessed of a small estate at Goodmanstead, in the neighbourhood of Headingham.

Mr. Pedgrift was an overbearing and despotic landlord and a strict game preserver, but he professed to be a strong Liberal in politics. It had for years been the ambition of this gentleman to represent his division of the County in Parliament; and as he could not expect much support from the country parsons, who were mostly Conservatives, he never let slip an opportunity of toadying the dissenting ministers of the district. When, therefore, it was proposed to restore Headingham Church, which had fallen into a terrible state of dilapidation, and it became necessary to ask Mr. Pedgrift's permission to restore the chancel also, that permission was flatly refused. Mr. Pedgrift would do what the law compelled him to do ; he would, as deputy lay-rector, keep the chancel weathertight, but more he would not do himself, and more he would not allow to be done by others.

There is nothing your political dissenter abbors so much as restored churches, and their necessary corollary, improved and hearty services, and it is an abomination in their righteous eyes that Churchmen should reform themselves. The Vicar, however, Mr. Hardcastle, who was a shrewd as well as an active man, bided his time. He showed no resentment at the would-be M. P.'s availing himself of an obsolete and obstructive piece of Tudor policy to injure the Church. He knew the lease would only run on a few years longer, and he made his own arrangements with the Dean and Chapter, and meanwhile he showed no sign of irritation, and took his own course. He set to work, and with the aid of his Church parishioners, restored the noble nave, aisles, and transepts, and filled them with comfortable open seats in lieu of the old rickety pews and mean galleries of painted deal.

Then he introduced gas, and established what his predecessors ought to have established thirty years before — an evening service, and announced at the same time that at that service there should be no reservation of seats, but that the rule would be "first come first served." The dis senters of course, were furious, as well they might be, for, like the craftsmen of Ephesus of old, they saw that their craft was in danger, and one very par- HEADINGHAM, ECCLESIASTICAL. 13 ticular Baptist Chapel almost had to shut up shop altogether. The " Eeverends " Bloke (of Eehoboth), Simcox (of " The Congregational Church "), and Blottery (of Zoar Chapel), under the signatures of Brutus, Gracchus, and Indignant Protestant, poured out their sorrows weekly in the congenial columns of the Eastern Star, but it was all in vain ; and it was but a poor consolation that, through their influence with Mr. Pedgrift, the Church folks had to look out from their restored nave into a squalid and incongruous chancel.

But that anomaly, at last, also came to an end. In six years the lease fell in, and then " Lawyer Pedgrift " learned, to his great astonishment, that his ill-used power was at an end, for the legal adviser of the Dean and Chapter in formed him, with much politeness, that it was " not their intention to renew the lease." In three months' time, that great genius and brilliant architect, George Edmund Street, whose premature death is a national misfortune, had prepared plans, and before a year was over the chancel was restored in a manner worthy of the noble building of which it formed a part.

Chapter III. The Lady Of The High House

Assuredly the lines of no spinster lady in Heading ham, I might almost say in all the sister counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, had fallen in more pleasant places than those of Miss Anastasia Hardwicke, of the High House, Headingham, a mansion which is situated less than a quarter of a mile from the town, from which it is only separated by the churchyard and two or three pleasant meadows well dotted with walnut trees and noble elms. This lady was the only daughter of a worthy country gentleman and sportsman, of good family and ample means, Mr. Theobald Hardwicke, of Marlingford Hall. At the Squire's death it was found that he had left his unentailed landed property — the " High House " and lands appertaining thereto in the parish of Headingham — to his daughter Anastasia, while the entailed estate of Marlingford, eight miles distant, went to his nephew Marmaduke, who at the period of the events detailed in the ensuing story reigned in his uncle's stead, and was, like him, a popular and highly respected country gentleman.

The "High House" at Headingham has no pretensions to grandeur, but it is a thoroughly comfortable and even handsome mansion, and of a dignity fully well suited to the estate, which produces a rental of some four thousand pounds a year. It is built of red brick well toned by time, but the window frames and cornices are of freestone. Its plan shows a centre with a projecting porch, and a wing on either side, and the house is surmounted by a large white cupola containing a clock and ?n unusually large and sonorous bell. The numerous windows are tall and narrow, and though there are but three storeys, the great height of these is perhaps the reason of the mansion obtaining the designation of the " High House," although the cupola, not a common feature in those parts, may perhaps have something to do with the appellation.

Handsome pleasure grounds and gardens extend themselves on the Eastern and Southern sides of the house, and these are adorned by six or seven cedars of Lebanon of most stately growth and imposing size, which give a sort of aristocratic air to the whole premises. Then too there are some pleasant terraces, upon which peacocks display their gorgeous plumage in sunny weather, and utter discordant but not un pleasing pe-aws in presage of approaching rain. Speaking generally, the characteristic of the outside of the High House is well-to-do, old-fashioned, respectability; that of the interior, luxurious comfort. The rooms, as already specified, are remarkably high, a rare feature in English houses, and they are handsomely fitted up in a comfortable old-fashioned style. There is some fine old carving in the style, if not by the actual hand, of Grinling Gibbons, a few good family pictures, and the quantity of fine and rare old china is seldom exceeded even in larger and more important mansions.

Not only the living-rooms, but even the corridors, passages, and principal bed-rooms are bright with choice specimens of the ancient vases of China and Japan ; and the whole house is redolent with the sweet, rich scent of pot-pourri, made after an inimitable receipt, whereof the secret is an heir loom in the family of Hardwicke alone. It is perhaps a shame to reveal a lady's age, but it is needful to mention that at the time of the events of this narrative Miss Anastasia Hardwicke was sixty-one years old, and it may be added, although a little failing for the last year or two, extremely well preserved for her age. In person she was tall and large-boned, and, although far from being stout, she was nevertheless a large woman. Her complexion was dark, and her cheeks so ruddy as to suggest, although the suggestion had no foundation in fact, a slight application of rouge.

She wore a front of dark hair which had once been her own, and two or three curls of like origin peeped out on either side from beneath a decidedly smart cap. Miss Hardwicke had large, dark-brown eyes, a firm, self willed mouth, and a nose which looked rather too big for her large, but not otherwise than handsome face. The nose, however, was a dignified feature, and added to the commanding aspect of the countenance it dominated. Nor did the mouth belie the cha racter of its possessor. Anastasia Hardwicke lost her mother when she was still a child, and at an early age succeeded her as the unquestioned mistress of her father's house, and this circumstance tended to develope a natural decision of temper. From childhood it had always been predicated of her that " Miss Anastasia had a will of her own," and increasing age by no means softened that trait of character.

Miss Hardwicke would never submit to be dictated to, and what pleased her best was to show her independence of the opinions of others. The only possible way, indeed, of getting your way with her was to make her imagine she was having her own. In her intercourse with her poorer neigh bours and dependants Miss Hardwicke affected a somewhat hard and austere manner — " she would not be imposed on," was her constant thought and remark — but she was a just and good mistress, gave liberally in secret, and when a case of real distress occurred was generosity itself. While the lady of the High House was seldom seen to give away a shilling, she nevertheless subscribed handsomely to all the parochial and county charities, and would often send a sick person to an hospital or convalescent home upon the South coast and bear all the expenses herself.

She did not dispense " broth " to the poor, but she gave soup, such as she ate herself, to those who needed it, and if a member of a poor family was "down " with a low fever, the Vicar knew that the port wine he applied for at the High House would be of the best quality and supplied without stint or grudging. Hence her poorer neighbours were wont to remark that " Miss Hardwicke's bark was worse than her bite." They liked her too for another reason ; although she sometimes abused them, she ne ver jjreachel. Under her sternness and self-assertion, and self-will, there was, you see, deep down in her nature, a vein of true humility, rare in the extreme at the present day, when a chit fresh from the school-room considers herself fit to condemn or to "convert" all her acquaintances, and when the more ignorant a woman is, the more she lays down the law on matters of theology.

" I am a sinful woman," she said one day to the Vicar, " what right have I to preach to others ? " In ordinary matters, however, Miss Hardwicke was self-willed enough, and more than sufficiently self-asserting. Thus she subscribed her £\0 a year to the National Schools, which the Government and Diocesan Inspectors reported to be in a state of high efficiency (she thought* that, as a gentlewoman of the Church of England, she could do no less), but at the same time she maintained an Infant School of her own in addition, with an uncertificated mis tress paid by herself, and mighty poor creatures her school-mistresses generally were. In other respects, the lady of the High House was a woman of some cleverness and considerable culture. She had learned Italian in her youth, and still retained a liking for that loveliest of ail languages, the Lingua del Amore.