The situation of the house excluded the possibility of much prospect
from any of the rooms; and while Fanny and some of the others were
attending Mrs. Rushworth, Henry Crawford was looking grave and shaking
his head at the windows. Every room on the west front looked across a
lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron
palisades and gates.
Having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any
other use than to contribute to the window-tax, and find employment for
housemaids, "Now," said Mrs. Rushworth, "we are coming to the chapel,
which properly we ought to enter from above, and look down upon; but as
we are quite among friends, I will take you in this way, if you will
excuse me."
They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something
grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of
devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion
of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge
of the family gallery above. "I am disappointed," said she, in a low
voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing
awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no
arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown
by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps
below.'"