From the terrace they looked back again at the house. Well-placed windows and ample verandas afforded views in every direction of the surrounding country. Retracing their way to the main entrance, they ascended a broad flight of stone steps and entered the house itself.
Following Dolly into the hall, Alice saw a chamber almost severe in spaciousness and still somewhat untamed in its oak ruggedness. But glimpses into the apartments opening off it were delightfully satisfying.
They peeped into the dining-room as they passed. It was an old-day room, heavily beamed in gloomy oak, with a massive round table and high chairs. The room filled the whole southern exposure of its wing and at one end Alice saw a fireplace above which hung a great Dutch mirror framed in heavy seventeenth-century style. Dolly pointed to it: "It is our sole heirloom, and Robert won’t change it from the fireplace. The Kimberly mirror, we call it--from Holland with our first Kimberly. The oak in this room is good."
Taken as a whole, however, Dolly frankly considered The Towers too evidently suggestive of the old-fashioned. This she satisfactorily accounted for by the fact that the house lacked the magic of a woman’s presence.
Alice, walking with her, slowly and critically, found nowhere any discordant notes. The carpets offered the delicate restraints of Eastern fancy, and the wall pictures, seen in passing, invited more leisurely inspection.
There was here something in marble, something there Oriental, but nowhere were effects confused, and they had been subdued until consciousness of their art was not aroused.
Alice, sensitive to indefinable impressions, had never seen anything comparable to what she now saw, and an interior so restful should have put her at ease.
Yet the first pleasing breath in this atmosphere brought with it something, she could not have told what, of uneasiness, and it was of this that she was vaguely conscious, as Dolly questioned the servant that met them.
"Yes, Mrs. De Castro. He is with Mr. Kimberly. I think they are in the garden."
"Tell them we are here. We will go up and speak to Uncle John."
They were at the foot of the stairs: "Sha’n’t I wait for you?" suggested Alice.
"By no means. Come with me. He is really the head of the family, you know," Dolly added in an undertone, "and mustn’t be slighted."