The family of Penton Hook took possession of the great house of Penton in the spring. It need scarcely be said that there were endless consultations, discussions, committees of ways and means of every imaginable kind before this great removal was accomplished. Lady Penton’s first visit to her new home was one which was full of solemnity. It was paid in much state, a visit of ceremony, greatly against the wish of both of the visitors and the visited, before the Russell Pentons withdrew from the great house.

“We must go to bid them good-bye,” Sir Edward said. “We must not fail in any civility.”

“Do you call that civility? She will hate the sight of us. I should myself in her place,” Lady Penton cried.

But he had his way, as was to be expected. They drove to Penton in the new carriage, which Lady Penton could not enjoy for thinking how much it cost, behind that worthy and excellent pair of brown horses, more noted for their profound respectability and virtue than for appearance or speed, which Sir Edward had consented to buy with some mortification, but which his wife approved as a pair, without much knowledge of the points in which they were defective. He knew that Russell Penton set them down as a pair of screws at the first glance; but Lady Penton, who had never possessed a pair of horses before, was quite impervious to this, and appreciated the grandeur, though never without a pang at the cost. But the sight of the great drawing-room overwhelmed the visitor. The first coup d’oeil of the beautiful, vast room, with its row of pillars, its vast stretches of carpets, its costly furniture, so stupefied her that the sight of Mrs. Russell Penton herself in her deep mourning, and that look of injured majesty of which she could not, with all her efforts, divest herself, failed to produce the effect which otherwise it must have had. Lady Penton had fully intended to take no notice, to banish if possible from her face all appearance of curiosity or of the natural investigation which a first visit to the house which was to be her own would naturally give rise to; but she could not quite conceal the startled dismay of her first glance—a sentiment which was more agreeable to the previous mistress of the house than any other would have been. It was not very amiable, perhaps, on the part of Mrs. Russell Penton, to be pleased that her successor should thus be overwhelmed by the weight of the inheritance—but perhaps it was natural enough.

It was not possible that the conversation should be otherwise than restrained and difficult. Russell Penton, as usual, threw himself into the breach. He entered into a lively description of their plans of travel.

“We both of us love the sunshine,” he said; “England is the noblest of countries, but she is far away from the center of warmth and light. There is no saying how far we may go southward before we come back.”

“But you were always fond of home, Alicia,” said (this being, of course, as all his companions remarked, the very last thing that ought to have occurred to him to say) the new proprietor of Penton.

“Home, I suspect,” she said, in her formal way, “is more where one chooses to make it than I have hitherto thought.” And then there was a pause.

“The weather will be quite delightful by this time in Italy, I suppose,” said Lady Penton, timidly. “I have never traveled at all; we have never had it in our power; but it seems as if it should always be fine there.”

“It is not, though. There is no invariable good weather,” said Russell Penton. “It generally turns out to be exceptional, and just as bad as what you have left, wherever you go.”

He had forgotten his little flourish of trumpets about the sunshine; and again they all sat silent, gazing at each other for a few terrible moments, asking each other on each side, Why did they come? and, Why did we come?

“The river has kept in tolerable bounds this year,” said Russell Penton, catching at a new subject; “no doubt because we have had less rain than usual. Come to the window, and let me show you the view.” He led Lady Penton to the further end of the room, where a side window commanded the whole range of the river, with the red roofs of Penton Hook making a spot of warm color low down by the side of the stream. “I am glad you see it before anything is disturbed,” he said; “an empty house is always a sight of dismay.”

“Oh, I wish it were never to be disturbed at all!” cried the poor lady; “I feel a dreadful impostor—an usurper—as if we were taking it from its rightful owner. It is all so suitable to her, and she to it,” she continued, casting an alarmed, admiring look to where the mistress of the house sat, an imposing figure, all crape and jet, like a queen about to abdicate, but not with her will.

“Yes, for she has made it all,” said the Prince Consort of the place; “but so will it be suitable to you when you have re-made it, Lady Penton; and if it is any consolation to you to know, I shall be a much happier man out of this house. After awhile I believe everything will be brighter for us both. But don’t let us talk of that. We have all had enough of the subject. Tell me what you are going to do about Mab, who has fallen so deeply in love with you all.”

“She is a dear little girl,” said Lady Penton. “I have asked her to come and pay us a long visit.”

“That is very kind; but pray remember that it would be still kinder to her to let her be with you as she wishes. She has more money than a little girl ought to have. It will be good and kind in every way.”

Lady Penton shook her head as he went on talking. Some people are proud in one way and some in another. She did not think much of Mab’s money. She was ready to open her heart to the orphan girl, but not to profit by her. They stood in the window with the great landscape before them, and the great room behind, which was too splendid even for that chiffonier; and involuntarily Lady Penton’s mind went back to that overwhelming question of the furniture, which was so much more important than little Mab and her fortune. To think of bringing anything from the Hook here! The chairs and tables would be lost even if they were not so shabby. Nothing would bear transplanting but the children, “And you can’t furnish a house with children,” she said, ruefully, to herself.

“Your wife no doubt will alter everything,” said Mrs. Russell Penton, following the other pair with her eyes.

“How could you think so, Alicia? It shall be altered as little as possible. Everything that belongs to the past is as dear to me as to you.”

“I said your wife,” said Alicia. And then she added, “No doubt she would like to go over the house.”

“She wishes nothing, I am sure, that would vex you,” Sir Edward said.

“Vex! I hope I have not so little self-command. The place has become indifferent indeed to me. It was dear by association, but now that’s all ended. One ends where another begins. I can only hope, Edward, that your branch of the family will be more fortunate—more—than ours have been.”

“Thank you, Alicia. I hope that you may be very happy, Russell and you. He’s as good a fellow as lives; and I’m sure, a delightful companion to be alone with.”

“Are you recommending my husband to me?” she said, with one of those smiles which made her cousin, whose utterances certainly were very inappropriate, shrink into himself. “Don’t you think I ought to know better than any one what a delightful companion he is? And I hear you are to have a marriage in your family. Harry Rochford will, I hope, prove a delightful companion too.”

“He is a good fellow,” said poor Sir Edward, able to think of no more original phrase. “He is not quite in the position a Penton might have looked for—”

“Oh,” she cried, hastily, “what does that matter?—there are Pentons and Pentons. And your daughter, Edward—your daughter—”

“I am sorry you don’t think well of my daughter, Alicia.”

“I never said so. She is very pretty and what people call sweet. I know no more of her; how could I? I was going to say she looked unambitious. And against Harry Rochford there is not a word to be said. Don’t you think your wife would like to see over the house?”

This is how they parted, without any warm rapprochement, though Alicia, with her usual consciousness of her own faults and her husband’s opinion, involuntarily condemned every word she herself said, and everything she did, while she almost forced Lady Penton from one room to another, each of which filled that poor lady with deeper and deeper dismay. But, notwithstanding this secret current of self-disapproval, and notwithstanding the certainty she had of what her husband felt on the subject, there was a certain stern pleasure in bidding her supplanters good-bye on the threshold of the house that was still her own; dismissing them, so to speak, for the last time from Penton with a keen sense of the despondency and discouragement with which they went away. She took notice of everything as she did them that unusual honor, which was an aggravation under the circumstances, of accompanying them to the door; of the pair of screws—of the absence of any footman—and, still more, of the depressed looks of the simple pair. All these things gave her a thrill of satisfaction. Who were they, to be the possessors of Penton? They did not even appreciate it—did not admire it—thought of the expense! But she went upstairs again with her husband following her, feeling more like a culprit, a school-boy who is expecting a lecture, than it was consistent with Alicia’s dignity to feel. Russell did not say anything, but he showed inclinations to whistle, as it were, under his breath.

“I am very glad this is over,” she said.

“So am I,” he replied.

“I know what you think, Gerald—that I ought to be more sympathetic. In what way could I be sympathetic? She is buried in calculations as to how they are to live here; and he—”

“I respect her calculations,” said Russell Penton. “It is a dreadful white elephant to come into the poor lady’s hands.”

“And yet you scarcely concealed your pleasure when it passed away from me—to whom it has always been a home so dear.”

“I never stand on my consistency, Alicia. I am glad and sorry about the same thing, you see. I am sorry that you are sorry to go away, yet I can’t help being glad that you are freed from the bondage of this place, which has been a kind of idol to you all; and I am glad they have it, yet sorry for poor Lady Penton and her troubled looks. When we go away from Penton I shall feel as if we were starting for our honey-moon.”

“Don’t say so, Gerald—when you think how it is that this has come about.”

“It has come about by a great grief, my darling, yet a natural one—one that could not have been long averted. And I hope you don’t object Alicia, now that you have fulfilled your duty to the last detail, that your husband should be glad to have you more his own than Penton would ever have permitted you to be.”

She accepted the kiss he gave her, not without a sense of the sweetness of being loved, but yet with a consciousness that when he spoke of her fulfilling her duty to the last detail he implied a certain satisfaction having got rid of that duty at last. She knew as well as he did, with a faint pleasure mingling with many a thought of pain and some of irritation, that this setting out together was indeed at last their real honey-moon, in so far as that consists of a life together and alone.

Lady Penton returned very grave and overwhelmed with thought to the shelter of those red roofs at the Hook which made so picturesque a point in the landscape from Penton. She did not make any response to the children who rushed out in a body to see the parents come home, to admire the pair of screws, and the new carriage. She went into the drawing-room and gazed long upon the chiffonier, measuring and gauging it with her eye from every side. It had, as has been said, a plate-glass back, and it was inlaid, and had various brass ornaments entitling it to the name of ormolu. She touched its corners with her hand lovingly, then shook her head. “Not even the chiffonier will do for Penton,” she said; “not even the chiffonier!” Nothing else could have given the family such an idea of the grandeur of the great house, and their own grandeur to whom it belonged, as well as of the saddening yet exhilarating fact that everything would have to be got new.

“Well, my dear,” said Sir Edward, “we must make up our minds to that, for to tell the truth, though you were always so pleased with that piece of furniture, I never liked it much.”

He never liked it much! Lady Penton turned a reproachful glance upon her husband; it was as if he had abandoned a friend in trouble.

“Edward,” she said, with a tone of despair, “if this will not do, nothing will do—nothing we have. I had given up the carpets and curtains, but I still had a fond hope—I thought that one side of the room, at any rate, would be furnished with that; but it would be nothing in the Penton drawing-room—nothing! And if that won’t do, nothing will do.”

“My dear,” Sir Edward said—he planted himself very firmly on his feet, with the air of Fitzjames, in the poem, setting his back against the rock—“my dear,” he repeated, looking round as who should say,

“I have thought of all that; and I have something to propose. You must not take me up in a hurry, but hear me out. We are all very fond of Penton Hook; but we can’t live in two houses at once.”

“Especially when they are so close to each other,” cried Anne, instinctively standing up by him. “I know what father means.”

She was the only one whose mind was disengaged and free to follow every new initiative. Ally was altogether occupied by her new prospects, and Walter, though he did his best to resume his old aspect, was still too much absorbed in those that were past. Anne alone was the cheerful present, the to-day of the family, ready to take up every suggestion. She stood up by her father womanfully and put her arm through his. “I am with you, father—though I’m not of much account,” she said.

Lady Penton withdrew her regretful gaze from her chiffonier. She did not, to tell the truth, expect any practical light about the furniture from her husband, who was only a theorist in such matters, or the enthusiast by his side; but she was a woman of impartial mind, and she would not refuse to listen. She turned her mild eyes upon the pair.

“Well, then,” said Sir Edward, “this is what I am going to propose: that I should let the Hook as it stands—poor old house, it is shabby enough, but in summer it will always bring a fair rent. Take away nothing; the chiffonier shall stand in all its glory, and you can come back and look at it, my dear, from time to time. And look here, it is no use straining at a gnat; we must make up our minds to it. As soon as my cousin goes we must write to Gillow or somebody—who is the best man?—to go in at once to Penton and furnish it from top to bottom. It is no use straining at a gnat, as I say. We must just make a great gulp and get it down.”

“Straining at a—do you call that a gnat, Edward? It is a camel you mean.”

“Camel or not, my dear,” said Sir Edward, with a look of determination; “that is how it must be.”

They all held their breath at this tremendous resolution. “But as for Gillow, that is nonsense. It must be Maple at the very utmost,” Lady Penton said.