“What a beautiful colour! what a sweet countenance Lady Julia has!” whispered Lady Mary Vivian to Lord Glistonbury: at the same time she could not refrain from glancing her eyes towards her son, to see what effect was produced upon him. Vivian’s eyes met hers; and this single look of his mother’s revealed to him all that she had, in her great prudence, resolved to conceal. He smiled at her, and then at Russell, as much as to say, “Surely there can be no comparison between such a child as this and Selina Sidney!” A few minutes afterwards, in consequence of a sign from Lady Glistonbury, Julia disappeared with her governess; and the moment was unnoticed by Vivian, who was then, as his mother observed, looking up at one of the turrets of the old castle. All its inhabitants were at this time uninteresting to him, except so far as they regarded his friend Russell; but the castle itself absorbed his attention. Lord Glistonbury, charmed to see how he was struck by it, offered to show him over every part of the edifice; an offer which he and Lady Mary gladly accepted. Lady Glistonbury excused herself, professing to be unable to sustain the fatigue: she deputed her eldest daughter to attend Lady Mary in her stead; and this was the only circumstance which diminished the pleasure to Vivian, for he was obliged to show due courtesy to this stiff taciturn damsel at every turn, whilst he was intent upon seeing the architecture of the castle, and the views from the windows of the towers and loop-holes of the galleries; all which Lady Sarah pointed out with a cold, ceremonious civility, and a formal exactness of proceeding, which enraged Vivian’s enthusiastic temper. The visit ended: he railed half the time he was going home against their fair, or, as he called her, their petrified guide; then, full of the Gothic beauties of Glistonbury, he determined, as soon as possible, to turn his own modern house into a castle. The very next morning he had an architect to view it, and to examine its capabilities. It happened that, about this time, several of the noblemen and gentry, in the county in which Vivian resided, had been seized with this rage for turning comfortable houses into uninhabitable castles. And, however perverse or impracticable this retrograde movement in architecture might seem, there were always at hand professional projectors, to convince gentlemen that nothing was so feasible. Provided always that gentlemen approve their estimates as well as their plans, they undertake to carry buildings back, in a trice, two, or three, or half a dozen centuries, as may be required, to make them Gothic or Saracenic, and to “add every grace that time alone can give.” A few days after Vivian had been at Glistonbury Castle, when Lord Glistonbury came to return the visit, Russell, who accompanied his lordship, found his friend encompassed with plans and elevations.