The house would have
been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne's time, but for
the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much
the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and
prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old remnant
stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the
sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all
down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made Hetty quite
sad to look at it: Arthur must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the
grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and
she should not see him for a long, long while--not till after dinner,
when they said he was to come up and make a speech.
But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was
come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early,
and Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the
rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long
tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants.
A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a
bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode--his arm no longer in a sling.
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