ning
Gadsmere to Mr. Gascoigne, with its various advantages and
disadvantages, spoke of what "we" might do to make the best of that
property. Gwendolen sat by in pale silence while Sir Hugo, with his
face turned toward Mrs. Davilow or Mr. Gascoigne, conjectured that Mrs.
Grandcourt might perhaps prefer letting Gadsmere to residing there
during any part of the year, in which case he thought that it might be
leased on capital terms to one of the fellows engaged with the coal:
Sir Hugo had seen enough of the place to know that it was as
comfortable and picturesque a box as any man need desire, providing his
desires were circumscribed within a coal area.

"_I_ shouldn't mind about the soot myself," said the baronet, with that
dispassionateness which belongs to the potential mood. "Nothing is more
healthy. And if one's business lay there, Gadsmere would be a paradise.
It makes quite a feature in Scrogg's history of the county, with the
little tower and the fine piece of water--the prettiest print in the
book."

"A more important place than Offendene, I suppose?" said Mr. Gascoigne.

"Much," said the baronet, decisively. "I was there with my poor
brother--it is more than a quarter of a century ago, but I remember it
very well. The rooms may not be larger, but the grounds are on a
different scale."

"Our poor dear Offendene is empty after all," said Mrs. Davilow. "When
it came to the point, Mr. Haynes declared off, and there has been no
one to take it since. I might as well have accepted Lord Brackenshaw's
kind offer that I should remain in it another year rent-free: for I
should have kept the place aired and warmed."

"I hope you've something snug instead," said Sir Hugo.

"A little too snug," said Mr. Gascoigne, smiling at his sister-in-law.
"You are rather thick upon the ground."

Gwendolen had turned with a changed glance when her mother spoke of
Offendene being empty. This conversation passed during one of the long
unaccountable pauses often experienced in foreign trains at some
country station. There was a dreamy, sunny stillness over the hedgeless
fields stretching to the boundary of poplars; and to Gwendolen the talk
within the carriage seemed only to make the dreamland larger with an
indistinct region of coal-pits, and a purgatorial Gadsmere which she
would never visit; till at her mother's words, this mingled, dozing
view seemed to dissolve and give way to a more wakeful vision of
Offendene and Pennicote und