Allegra wrote to Mrs. Meynell next day, announcing the decision that had been arrived at, not without grateful acknowledgments of that lady’s kindness. The rest of her belongings were to be sent to her forthwith, easels, and colour-boxes, books and knickknacks; her brother’s gifts, most of them from the romantic East; things which made her few little Kensingtonian keepsakes look very trivial and Philistine. Allegra’s possessions gave a new individuality to the large, airy bedroom, and the tiny boudoir at the corner of the house, looking seaward, which Isola had arranged for her. While these things were doing Martin Disney was buying horses and buying land--a farm of over two hundred acres which would make his property better worth holding--and he had further employed a Plymouth architect to plan an enlargement of the old-fashioned cottage--a new and much more spacious drawing-room, two bedrooms over, a verandah below, and a loggia above. In that mild climate the loggia would afford a pleasant lounge even in winter, and myrtle and roses would speedily cover the wooden columns which sustained the tiled roof. It was to be a homely Italian loggia--unpretentious, and not particularly architectural; but Isola and her sister-in-law were delighted at the idea. The stables were to be enlarged as well as the house. “You have no idea how I have hoarded and scraped to lay by money ever since I bought the Nest,” said Disney. “I believe I was the greatest screw in the service all through my last campaign.” He laughed aloud in amused remembrance of many small sacrifices, while the three heads clustered over the architect’s plan, which had that factitious prettiness of delicate drawing and colour which makes every house so much nearer perfection upon paper than it ever can be in brick and stone. CHAPTER IX. “LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO?” Like most small country settlements, little fraternities of well-to-do people who think themselves the beginning and end of the world, Trelasco was slow to rise to any festivity in the way of party-giving. So it was about two months after Colonel Disney’s return before the friendly calls and interchange of small civilities culminated in a dinner-party at Glenaveril. It seemed, indeed, only right and natural that the great house of the district, great by reason of Lord Lostwithiel’s non-residence, should be the first to open its doors in a ceremonial manner to the colonel and his womankind. The invitation to his sister might be taken as an especial compliment, arms outstretched to receive one who was a stranger in the land. “We want to know that nice, young sister of yours,” Mr. Crowther said to Colonel Disney, in his patronizing way, as they all came out of church the Sunday before the dinner-party. “A remarkably fine girl.”