CHAPTER III.
ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE.
Penalva Court, about half a mile from the quay, is "like a house in a story;"-- a house of seven gables, and those very shaky ones; a house of useless long passages, useless turrets, vast lumber attics where maids see ghosts, lofty garden and yard walls of grey stone, round which the wind and rain are lashing through the dreary darkness; low oak-ribbed ceilings; windows which once were mullioned with stone, but now with wood painted white; walls which were once oak-wainscot, but have been painted like the mullions, to the disgust of Elsley Vavasour, poet, its occupant in March 1854, who forgot that, while the oak was left dark, no man could have seen to read in the rooms a yard from the window.
He has, however, little reason to complain of the one drawing-room, where he and his wife are sitting, so pleasant has she made it look, in spite of the plainness of the furniture.

A bright log-fire is burning on the hearth.

There are a few good books too, and a few handsome prints; while some really valuable nick-nacks are set out, with pardonable ostentation, on a little table covered with crimson velvet.

It is only cotton velvet, if you look close at it; but the things are pretty enough to catch the eye of all visitors; and Mrs.
Heale, the Doctor's wife (who always calls Mrs.Vavasour "my lady," though she does not love her), and Mrs.Trebooze, of Trebooze, always finger them over when they have any opportunity, and whisper to each other half contemptuously,--"Ah, poor thing! there's a sign that she has seen better days." And better days, in one sense, Mrs.Vavasour has seen.

I am afraid, indeed, that she has more than once regretted the morning when she ran away in a hack-cab from her brother Lord Scoutbush's house in Eaton Square, to be married to Elsley Vavasour, the gifted author of "A Soul's Agonies and other Poems." He was a lion then, with foolish women running after him, and turning his head once and for all; and Lucia St.Just was a wild Irish girl, new to London society, all feeling and romance, and literally all; for there was little real intellect underlying her passionate sensibility.