fitness for an encounter with any harder
experience; all the more, because there were gleams of fierce resistance
to any discipline that had a harsh or unloving aspect. For the only thing
in which Caterina showed any precocity was a certain ingenuity in
vindictiveness. When she was five years old she had revenged herself for
an unpleasant prohibition by pouring the ink into Mrs. Sharp's
work-basket; and once, when Lady Cheverel took her doll from her, because
she was affectionately licking the paint off its face, the little minx
straightway climbed on a chair and threw down a flower-vase that stood on
a bracket. This was almost the only instance in which her anger overcame
her awe of Lady Cheverel, who had the ascendancy always belonging to
kindness that never melts into caresses, and is severely but uniformly
beneficent.

By-and-by the happy monotony of Cheverel Manor was broken in upon in the
way Mr. Warren had announced. The roads through the park were cut up by
waggons carrying loads of stone from a neighbouring quarry, the green
courtyard became dusty with lime, and the peaceful house rang with the
sound of tools. For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with
the architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion; thus
anticipating, through the prompting of his individual taste, that general
reaction from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style, towards a
restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth
century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness
of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his
fox-hunting neighbours, who wondered greatly that a man with some of the
best blood in England in his veins, should be mean enough to economize in
his cellar, and reduce his stud to two old coach-horses and a hack, for
the sake of riding a hobby, and playing the architect. Their wives did
not see so much to blame in the matter of the cellar and stables, but
they were eloquent in pity for poor Lady Cheverel, who had to live in no
more than three rooms at once, and who must be distracted with noises,
and have her constitution undermined by unhealthy smells. It was as bad
as having a husband with an asthma. Why did not Sir Christopher take a
house for her at Bath, or, at least, if he must spend his time in
overlooking workmen, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Manor? This
pity was quite gratuitous, as the most plentiful pity always is; for