The lady found it pleasant to rest a little under the green bower where the light hardly penetrated. A peace, a pleasant calmness sweeter than the silence and calm of a Gothic cathedral, pervaded the place. She leant her back against a tree and gave a long look at the thick foliage around her.
The count stood near. Both were silent for some time. At last the man felt, without seeing it, that the lady's gaze was fixed upon him. He resisted the magnetic attraction of the look for some minutes. When at last he raised his eyes, he saw that her expression was so merry and daring that he dropped them again. Amalia gave vent to a mischievous laugh, which surprised, confused, and somewhat irritated him; and then seeing that her merriment did not cease, he said with a forced smile:
"Nothing, nothing," she returned, putting her handkerchief to her mouth. "Take me to see the house."
And then she took his arm again. The house was a large, very old building of yellowish stone, worm-eaten by age, with two little square towers at the sides. Everything about it was shabby or worn out. Some bars were wanting in the stair-rails as well as in the balconies; the ceilings of the rooms were discoloured, the partition walls cracked, the plaster in holes; the looking-glasses, so much thought of in bygone days, were so covered with dust that they reflected nothing; the walls were damp and dirty, and the pictures hung thereon were so discoloured that one could not see what the artists had intended to depict; the scanty furniture of the rooms was worn out by the use of past generations. The things were all quite done for. Amalia liked the look of past grandeur. How many different beings had lived in that house! How they must have laughed and wept in these large rooms. Each one had its particular name: one was called the cardinal's room, because in times past a cardinal of the family occupied it when on a visit to the Grange; another the portrait-room, because a few pictures hung on the walls; and another the new room, although it looked as old and even older than the rest of the apartments. Everything bore traces of the private life of a family of bygone ages.
"This is the countess's chamber," said Luis, as he took his friend into a moderate-sized room, which, in spite of the dust and ravages of time, looked better furnished than the others. It was an elegant style of apartment, bearing evidence that past generations had not been destitute of a love of decoration. There was a Pompadour escritoire, some chairs of the Regency, several pictures in pastel; and painted on the ceiling were cherubs floating in an atmosphere which had once been blue.