Lady Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for generations.

She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests.

During forty years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed, although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.
The house which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus dating forty years back was a handsome building.

She had added more rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano--anon a billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home after a tour in America.

Thus the house had grown into a long low pile of Tudor masonry--steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, magnolia, clematis, myrtle and roses--and all those flowers which thrive and flourish in that mild and sheltered spot.
The views from those mullioned casements were perfect.