But hold:--there is a memory in my earlier recollection, more fixed than
the trees--they were poplars--of the Friars' School playground. I leaped
into a seat beside my father in the carriage one day, and we drove back
far into the country. Green and pleasant all the landscape we passed. Or
did it pass us, I was thinking in my weird little mind? We arrived at
length at wide gates and drove up an avenue, lined by stately trees and
running between broad grain fields, which led to a court shaded with
leafy giants of elms and cobbled in an antique fashion; and under the
woof of boughs and leaves overhead ran a very long old country-house,
cottage-built. Surpassingly peaceful, and secluded was its air. It had
oblique-angle-faced, shingled gables, and many windows with thin-ribbed
blinds; and a high bit of gallery. On one hand near it, under the hugest
of the trees was a cool, white, well-house of stone, like a little
tower. I remember vividly the red-stained door of that. On the other
hand, a short distance off, commenced the capacious pile of the barns.
Close at the back of the house ran a long wooded hill.

It was the ancient Manoir of Esneval--the Maison Blanche.--one of the
relics of a feudal time. As we drove in and our wheels stopped, a little
exquisite girl stood on the gallery, looking. Her child's face eyed us
with wonder but courage for a few moments; then she ran within and, to
the pang and regret of my heart, she appeared no more.

The little, brave face of the Manoir d'Esneval haunted me, child as I
was, for years.




CHAPTER V.