Dragonwyck by Anya Seton Page A

amused at her question. 'No. There are many other legends and superstitions of this region; I hope you're not too impressionable or Old Zélie will frighten you with her spook rocks and phantom ships and witches—' He stopped abruptly as though he had been going to add something else.
    She waited politely to see if he would go on. But he did not, and just then the steamer gave one sharp blast and veered to the eastern bank. 'We're here,' he said.
    She turned from her puzzled contemplation of his face.
    In after years Miranda knew that her first sight of Dragonwyck was the most vivid and significant impression of her life. She stared at the fantastic silhouette which loomed dark against the eastern sky, the spires and gables and chimneys dominated in the center by one high tower; and it was as though the good and evil, the happiness and tragedy, which she was to experience under that roof materialized into physical force and struck across the quiet river into her soul.
    While the steamer made fast to the private landing she stood by the rail close to Nicholas gazing up at his house with a fascinated repulsion, while the setting sun touched half the hundred windows into fiery rectangles against the blackness of the vine-covered stone.
    Nicholas seeing her awe-struck face was content to let her gaze in silence.
    His home was part of him, an externalized expression of his will, for upon his inherited Dutch Manor house he had superimposed the Gothic magnificence which he desired. He had been attracted by the formulations of Andrew Downing, the young landscape architect who lived on the river at Newburgh and whose directions for building 'romantic and picturesque villas' were changing the countryside; but it was not in Nicholas to accept another's ideas, and when five years ago he had remodeled the old Van Ryn homestead, he had used Downing simply as a guide. To the original ten rooms he had added twenty more, the gables and turrets, and the one high tower. The result, though reminiscent of a German Schloss on the Rhine, crossed with Tudor English and interwoven with pure fantasy, was nevertheless Hudson River American and not unsuited to its setting.
    The Dragonwyck gardens were as much an expression of Nicholas' personality as was the mansion, for here, he had subdued Nature to a stylized ornateness. Between the untouched grove of hemlocks to the south and the slope of a rocky hill half a mile to the north he had created along the river an artificial and exotic beauty.
    To Miranda it was overpowering, and she felt dazed as they mounted marble steps from the landing. She was but vaguely conscious of the rose gardens and their pervasive scent, of small Greek temples set beneath weeping willows, of rock pavilions, violet-bordered fountains, and waterfalls. She was acutely conscious of her travel-stained brown dress, and the sharp, contemptuous stare of the liveried footman who had met them on the pier and was gingerly carrying her wicker basket.
    It wasn't credible that she was to live in a place like this, and her steps as she followed Nicholas to the great front door dragged slower and slower even as her heart beat faster.
    They entered the great hall which ran sixty feet through the house to open on the back lawns by the drive. It was dark inside, for the tapers had not yet been lit, and she shrank toward Nicholas as two people glided through a door at the right and confronted them bowing. They were Magda, Mrs. Van Ryn's housekeeper and personal maid, and Tompkins the butler.
    They both ignored Miranda while they greeted their master, but from the woman's thick back and round averted head Miranda felt hostility.
    "Where's Mrs. Van Ryn?' asked Nicholas, allowing the butler to take his cape and hat.
    'In the Green Drawing-Room, my lord.' The butler was a Yorkshireman who had accompanied Nicholas back from England years ago and with the special snobbery of the British servant had always addressed his master by this title, insisting