Only the self-sufficient--in fact, only those who are perfectly calm and indifferent to the general suffrage, secure in their unalterable, unselfconscious certainty of breeding--can afford to ignore the tricks and trappings on which the less fortunate have to rely for notice. Only the well-bred can afford to be dowdy; only the well-bred can afford to ignore the Peau d’Espagne or the Violette des Bois which may happen to be in fashion, and trust for their triumph only to the faint, unanalyzed fragrance of beauty and nobility that accompanies them inseparably from birth to death, without effort or expense of theirs. And as a modern building, decked out in modern old oak, and fussy with stolen ornaments from bygone times, must always base its claim to admiration on the self-advertisement of its luxuries, so some old collapsing turret, the haunt of dead Queens, the chosen home of sad beautiful memories, needs no adornment, no advertisement to reinforce its calm and unconscious right to our worship. Brakelond, old, gorgeous, forgotten Brakelond, was too proud to trick itself out for popular applause, too quiet in its self-centred pride to allure the vulgar; it challenged reverence by right divine, and held the attention without desire to do so. All this of Brakelond far away, throned on the undulating horizon of misty woodland. It was a sapphire crown on a pinnacle of the world’s rim. It did not flop and flounder along its hill, like Windsor; rather, it held itself bravely, concisely, on its seat, with something of Belvoir’s distant majesty. But Belvoir is as generous as it is beautiful, offering itself to the world’s admiration; Brakelond, on the contrary, was governed by a grimly selfish passion of seclusion, severe and rigid. It kept aloof as if it had indeed been some magic Castle of Lyonesse, and none was permitted to approach beyond the outermost borders of the forest precincts. Lonely, menacing, fearful, Brakelond frowned away the approach of all new-comers. The spirit of its owner haunted it, insisted on inviolable privacy.