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How thoughtful of her! But it don’t vex me—luckily, no—not the least bit; and Gwenthian should have known that, as you know now, Sab. Don’t you?”
“I do,” answered Sabrina, in full conviction. For Vaga’s laugh was so utterly devoid of all regret at what had been revealed to her, no one could suppose or suspect there was within her breast a thought of Reginald Trevor, beyond looking on him in the light of a mere acquaintance. To prove this it needed neither her rejoinder, nor the emphasis she gave it, saying,—
“I don’t care that for him!” the that being a snap of her fingers.
“I wish father had but known you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Well, it might have saved him the scene Gwenthian was witness to; and which must have been rather painful to both. After all, it may have been for the best. But, worst or best, I wonder where Master Trevor is making for now? It can’t be Hollymead.”
“Not likely, after what you’ve told me. But we shall soon see—at least whether he be coming up this way.”
Both were familiar with the Forest roads—had ridden if not walked them all—knew their every turning and crossing. Where that from Mitcheldean descended into the Drybrook valley it forked right and left at the ford of the little stream where now there is a bridge known as the “Nail.” Left lay the road to Coleford, right, another leading back out of the Forest by the Lea Bailey. And between these two branchings a third serpentined up the slope for Ruardean, over the ridge on which they stood.
While they were still regarding the horseman on the grey, and his groom behind, two other horsemen came in sight, riding side by side on the same slope, just commencing its descent. Again Sabrina’s eyes flashed up with delight—that must be her expected one—riding alongside his servant.
While indulging in this pleasant conjecture, she was surprised at seeing still another pair of mounted men, filing out from under the trees, side by side also, and following the first two at that distance and with the air which seemed to proclaim them servitors.
“It may not be he, after all!” she reflected within herself, her brow again shadowing over. “He said he would be alone with only Hubert, and—”
Her reflections were brought to an abrupt termination by seeing the grey horse, after plunging across the stream, turn head uphill in the direction of Ruardean.
There was no time to make further scrutiny of the quartette descending the opposite slope. In twenty minutes, or less if he meant speed, he on the grey would be up to them; and if Reginald Trevor, that would be awkward, whether on his way to Hollymead or not.
It was Sabrina who now counselled hastening home; which they did with a quick free step their country training and Forest practice had made easy, as familiar, to them.
Chapter Eight.
A House in Tudor Style.
It would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting spot for a dwelling-place than that where stood Hollymead House. Near the north-western angle of the Forest of Dean, it commanded a view of the Wye where this beautiful stream, after meandering through the verdant meads of Herefordshire, over old red sandstone, assaults the carboniferous rocks of Monmouth, whose bold, high ridges, lying transversely to its course, look as if no power of water could ever have cut through them. But the Wye has, in its flow of countless ages, carved out—in Spanish-American phrase cañoned—a channel with banks here and there rising nigh a thousand feet above the level of its bed. Between these it glides with swift current; not direct, but in snake-like contortions, fantastically doubling back upon itself, almost to touching. Here and there cliffs rise sheer up from the water’s edge, grand mural escarpments of the mountain limestone, such as show the “tors” and dales of Derbyshire. The Codwell rocks below Lydbrook, forming the base of the famed “Symonds’ Yat,” are of this character, their grim façades seamed and broken into separate battlements, giving them resemblance to ruined castles, but such as could have been inhabited only “in those days when there were giants on the earth.”
The view from Hollymead House—better still from a high hill or “tump” above it—took in the valley of the river where it enters the carboniferous strata near Kerne bridge. There was no Kerne bridge then; the stream being crossed by ford and ferry, a mile further up. Looking is that direction, in the foreground was Coppetwood Hill, an oblong eminence embraced by one of the great sinuosities of the river, more than six miles in the round and less than one across the neck or isthmus. At this neck, perched on a spur of the hill o’erhanging the stream, stood a vast pile of building, the castle of Goodrich, on whose donjon floated a flag long ere Norman baron set foot on the soil of England. For there the Saxon Duke Godric lorded it over his churls and swineherds; his iron rule at the Conquest replaced by that of the Marshalls, and later the Talbots, alike stern and severe.
Looking beyond, and north-westward, a wide stretch of country came under the eye, thickly wooded and undulating, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn—now called Archenfield—backed in the far distance by a horizon of hills, many with a mountain aspect, and some real mountains, as the curious Saddlebow, with a depression or “col” between its twin summits; Garway, the Cerriggalch, and the long dark range of the Hatterals.
To the west was a very conglomeration of mountains, seemingly crowded against one another, yet all apart, each distinguishable by an outline and aspect of its own. Most conspicuous of these, the conical Sugarloaf, the two Skyrrids—one of them named Holy Mountain—and the Blorenge, all towering above the town of Abergavenny, which is surrounded and embraced by them as the arena of an amphitheatre by its outer and more elevated circle.
Sweeping round the sky line, north and north-east the eye was met by many a bold projection, as the Longmynds and Clee hills, with their blue basalt, and the Haugh wood, summit of the famed Silurian upcast of Woolhope. Farther on to the east the Malvern Beacons of true mountain aspect, remarkable from their isolation, but still more in that there the geologist can see rocks the earliest stratified on earth, some metamorphosed, and all trace of stratification destroyed; while there, too, are visible the rocks of igneous agency, upheaved both by plutonic and volcanic forces—the gneisses, basalts, syenites, and granites.
Eastward over the Forest edge could be seen, extending far as vision’s verge, the wide plains of Worcester and Gloucester—as said, an ancient sea bed—through which now flows the yellow Severn; and on a clear day bends and reaches of this grand river might be distinguished glistening, gold-like, in the sun; the level expanse of its valley diversified by several isolated and curious eminences—hills and ridges—as May and Breddon due east, and, more to the south, the Mendips and Cotswolds.
Alone looking southward from Hollymead no mountains met the eye; in that direction only the undulations of the Forest itself, clad in its livery of green—all trees. But immediately in front of the house, and sloping gently away from it, was a wide and long stretch of park-like pasture land, where the trees stood solitary or in clumps, a double row of grand oaks bisecting it centrally, guarding and shading the avenue which led to the public road outside. This passed from Ruardean out of the forest by a steep descent down to Walford, thence on to Ross.
Architecturally, Hollymead House was a singular structure. For it was in the early Tudor style, built when bricks were a scarce and dear commodity, and timber, in the inverse ratio, plentiful and cheap. The walls were a framework of hewn oak—uprights, cross-beams, and diagonal ties—due to the handiwork of the carpenter, only the spaces between showing the skill of the mason. And, as if to keep ever in record the fact of this double yet distinct workmanship, the painter and whitewasher had been now and then called upon to perpetuate it by giving separate and severely contrasting colours to what was timber and the interspacing material of mortar and brick. The result a striped and chequered aspect of the oddest and quaintest kind. Sir Richard