Theodore said. He did not mean it, but there was something in
his tone which reminded everybody--the servants, who naturally came
rushing to see what was the matter, and Mrs. Warrender, who withdrew at
his bidding--that he was now the master of the house.

CHAPTER V.

Markland was a much more important place than the Warren. It was one
of the chief places in the county in which the family had for many
generations held so great a position. It was a large building, with all
that irregularity of architecture which is dear to the English mind,--a
record of the generations which had passed through it and added to it,
in itself a noble historical monument, full of indications of the
past. But it lost much of its effect upon the mind from the fact that
it was in much less good order than is usual with houses of similar
pretensions; and above all because the wood around it had been wantonly
and wastefully cut, and it stood almost unsheltered upon its little
eminence, with only a few seedling trees, weedy and long, like boys who
had outgrown their strength, straggling about the heights. The house
itself was thus left bare to all the winds. An old cedar, very large but
very feeble, in the tottering condition of old age to which some trees,
like men, come, with two or three of its longest branches torn off by
storm and decay, interposed its dark foliage over the lower roof of the
west wing, and gave a little appearance of shelter, and a few Lombardy
poplars and light-leaved young birches made a thin and interrupted
screen to the east; but the house stood clear of these light and
frivolous young attendants in a nakedness which made the spectator
shiver. The wood in the long avenue had been thinned in almost the same
ruthless way, but here and there were shady corners, where old trees,
not worth much in the market, but very valuable to the landscape, laid
their heads together like ancient retainers, and rustled and nodded
their disapproval of the devastation around.

Young Lady Markland, with her boy, on the afternoon of the June day on
which Mr. Warrender was buried, walked up and down for some time in
front of the house, casting many anxious looks down the avenue, by
which, in its present denuded state, every approaching visitor was so
easily visible. She was still very young, though her child was about
eight; she having been married, so to speak, out of the nursery, a young
creature of sixteen, a motherless girl, with