devices. There were many monuments in
the church, on which Hugh read the history of the ancient family, now
engulphed in a family more wealthy and ancient still; the latest of the
memorials was that of a lady, whose head, sculptured by Chantrey, with
its odd puffs of hair, had a discreet and smiling mien, as of one who
had known enough sorrow to purge prosperity of its grossness. From the
churchyard there led a little path, which skirted a wide moat of dark
water, full of innumerable fish, basking in the warmth; in the centre
of the moat stood a dark grove of trees, with a thick undergrowth.
Suddenly, through an opening, Hugh saw the turrets of an ancient
gatehouse, built of mellow brick, rising into the sunlight, with an
astonishing sweetness and nobleness of air; below was a lawn, bordered
by yew-hedges, where a party of people, ladies in bright dresses and
leisurely men, were sitting talking with a look of smiling content. It
was more like a scene in a romance than a thing in real life. Hugh
stood unobserved beneath a tree, and looked long at the delightful
picture; and then presently wandered further by a grassy lane, with
high hedges full of wild roses and elder-blooms, where the air had a
hot, honied perfume. He came in a moment to a great clear stream
running silently between banks full of meadow-sweet and loosestrife.
The turrets of the gatehouse looked pleasantly over the trees of the
little park that lay on the other side of the stream. The air was
still but fresh. The trees stood silent, with the metallic look of
high summer upon their stiff leaves, as though seen in a picture. The
whole landscape seemed to have a consecration of quiet joy and peace
over it. It seemed a place made for the walks of rustic lovers, on
summer evenings, under a low-hung moon. The whole scene, the homely
bridge, the murmur of the water in the pool, the blossoming hedges, had
a sense of delicate romance about it. It seemed to stand for so much
happiness, and to draw Hugh into the charmed circle.

The difficulty was somehow to believe that the place was in reality a
centre of real and ordinary life; it seemed almost impossibly beautiful
and delicious to Hugh, like a play enacted for his sole benefit, a
sweet tale told. Those gracious persons in the garden seemed like
people in a scene out of Boccaccio, whose past and whose future are
alike veiled and unknown, and who just emerge, in the light of art, as
a sweet company se