I lingered a little behind the others to have a stare at this house,
which, as I have told you, stood on the site of my old dwelling.

It was a longish building with its gable ends turned away from the
road, and long traceried windows coming rather low down set in the
wall that faced us. It was very handsomely built of red brick with a
lead roof; and high up above the windows there ran a frieze of figure
subjects in baked clay, very well executed, and designed with a force
and directness which I had never noticed in modern work before. The
subjects I recognised at once, and indeed was very particularly
familiar with them.

However, all this I took in in a minute; for we were presently within
doors, and standing in a hall with a floor of marble mosaic and an
open timber roof. There were no windows on the side opposite to the
river, but arches below leading into chambers, one of which showed a
glimpse of a garden beyond, and above them a long space of wall gaily
painted (in fresco, I thought) with similar subjects to those of the
frieze outside; everything about the place was handsome and
generously solid as to material; and though it was not very large
(somewhat smaller than Crosby Hall perhaps), one felt in it that
exhilarating sense of space and freedom which satisfactory
architecture always gives to an unanxious man who is in the habit of
using his eyes.

In this pleasant place, which of course I knew to be the hall of the
Guest House, three young women were flitting to and fro. As they
were the first of the sex I had seen on this eventful morning, I