bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places
thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy,
yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled
walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the
quiet nuns had walked hand in hand; a wall bordered with espaliers, and
shadowed on one side by goodly oaks, which shut out the flat landscape,
and circled in the house and gardens with a darkening shelter.

The house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It
was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven;
some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained
glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others
so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. Great piles of
chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as
if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have
fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and
trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them.
The principal door was squeezed into a corner of a turret at one angle
of the building, as if it were in hiding from dangerous visitors, and
wished to keep itself a secret--a noble door for all that--old oak, and
studded with great square-headed iron nails, and so thick that the sharp
iron knocker struck upon it with a muffled sound, and the visitor rung a
clanging bell that dangled in a corner among the ivy, lest the noise of
the knocking should never penetrate the stronghold.

A glorious old place. A place that visitors fell in raptures with;
feeling a yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there
forever, staring into the cool fish-ponds and counting the bubbles as
the roach and carp rose to the surface of the water. A spot in which
peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on