had worn off
in their gregarious gathering at a London hotel they were not likely to
consort with their own country people, who indeed were apt to fight
shy of one another, and even to indulge in invidious criticism of one
another when admitted in that society to which they were all equally
strangers. So he took leave of them on their way back to London with the
belief that their acquaintance terminated with that brief incident. But
he was mistaken.

In the year following he was spending his autumn vacation at a
country house. It was an historic house, and had always struck him as
being--even in that country of historic seats--a singular example of the
vicissitudes of English manorial estates and the mutations of its
lords. His host in his prime had been recalled from foreign service
to unexpectedly succeed to an uncle's title and estate. That estate,
however, had come into the possession of the uncle only through his
marriage with the daughter of an old family whose portraits still looked
down from the walls upon the youngest and alien branch. There were
likenesses, effigies, memorials, and reminiscences of still older
families who had occupied it through forfeiture by war or the favoritism
of kings, and in its stately cloisters and ruined chapel was still felt
the dead hand of its evicted religious founders, which could not be
shaken off.

It was this strange individuality that affected all who saw it. For,
however changed were those within its walls, whoever were its inheritors
or inhabiters, Scrooby Priory never changed nor altered its own
character. However incongruous or ill-assorted the portraits that looked
from its walls,--so ill met that they might have flown at one another's
throats in the long nights when the family were away,--the great
house itself was independent of them all. The be-wigged, be-laced, and
be-furbelowed of one day's gathering, the round-headed, steel-fronted,
and prim-kerchiefed congregation of another day, and even the
black-coated, bare-armed, and bare-shouldered assemblage of to-day had
no effect on the austerities of the Priory. Modern houses might show
the tastes and prepossessions of their dwellers, might have caught some
passing trick of the hour, or have recorded the augmented fortunes or
luxuriousness of the owner, but Scrooby Priory never! No one had dared
even to disturb its outer rigid integrity; the breaches of time and
siege were left untouched. It held its calm indifferent