of the Chapel restored, and all the portfolios about the house were
searched for it, disquieting mamma, who suspected Martyn's Oxford
notions of intending to rebuild it, nor would he say that it ought
not to be done. However, he with his more advanced ecclesiology,
pronounced Mr. Stafford's reconstruction to be absolutely mistaken
and impossible, and set to work on a fresh plan, which, by the bye,
he derides at present. It afforded, however, an excuse for routing
under the ivy and among the stones, but without much profit. From
the mouldings on the materials and in the stables and the front
porch, it was evident that the chapel had been used as a quarry, and
Emily's arch was very probably that of the entrance door. In a dry
summer, the foundations of the walls and piers could be traced on
the turf, and the stumps of one or two columns remained, but the
rest was only a confused heap of fragments within which no one could
have entered as in that strange vision.

Another thing became clear. There had once been a wall between the
beech wood and the lawn, with a gate or door in it; Chapman could
just remember its being taken down, in James Winslow's early married
life, when landscape gardening was the fashion. It must have been
through this that the Winslow brothers were returning, when poor
Margaret perhaps expected them to enter by the front.

We wished we could have consulted Dame Dearlove, but she had died a
few years before, and her school was extinct.



CHAPTER XLI--WILLS OLD AND NEW