THE MATCHMAKER. A NOVEL. BY THE AUTHOR OF "COUSIN GEOFFREY," AND "THE MARRYING MAN." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1842. THE MATCHMAKER. CHAPTER XLVIII. "It stood embosomed in a happy valley, Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak His host with broad arms 'gainst the thunder stroke ; The dappled foresters; as day awoke, The branching stag swept down with all his herd, BYRON. Lindsay Hall was the perfection of an English gentleman's country-seat. It was a gothic building, very large, and of a rare and very dark-coloured brickwork. In former times it had been a favourite retreat of one of our kings, and many singular old legends were connected with many of its curious chambers. It was a delightful mixture of interesting antiquity and modern elegance. There were so many chambers, and windings, and corridors, that you could easily lose yourself in the house, and it required a residence of some time to know it well. When it came into Mr. Lindsay's hands, it was much out of repair; it had been possessed by several generations of his family, and it had been his earliest ambition, when, as a boy, he had spent a vacation with an old miserly cousin there, if ever he were rich, to purchase it of a relative who attached but little value to it, and to restore it to all its former beauty. The dream of his boyhood (strange to say) was realised, and Lindsay Hall was converted from a ruin, into one of the most beautiful abodes of a country so famous for her country-seats. But this had not been done by pulling down old arches, time-worn hall and towers, destroying quaint stone-work, moss-grown tracery, oak wainscotings, and painted, or fretted ceilings. Mr. Lindsay's great object had been to restore; this done and what cannot be done by English masons, builders, and decorators (and done to perfection too)-all he permitted himself was to introduce into the interior, and into the beautiful grounds, all the costly inventions of modern luxury, but taking care, as much as possible, to give an outward appearance in keeping with the gothic abode. The chairs and the sofas were of the quaint shape of the olden time, when lounging was unknown, but luxurious as eider-down and spring and air cushions could make them. The carpets were of the patterns our industrious fore-mothers dreamt away their lives in working, but soft to the tread as the velvet pile of these days. The windows of stained glass were restored, and the sun came as brightly through them, upon the soft Grecian braids and long ringlets of Augusta and Ellen, as it had done of yore on the quaint Anna Boleyn head-gear of velvet and pearls, or King Charles's crops, or the powdered toupées of the beauties who had passed away. Perhaps, too, the scriptural subjects of the windows, |