in full dress just about ten minutes before the first of the guests was announced, Lady Jane received him with a calm affectionateness, and asked him no questions about his disposal of th

d; all the arrangements perfect; the menu commend

favourite nephew; Lady Mabel looking very fragile, flower-like, and graceful, in her pale blue gauze dinner-dress. Lad

treating him with a calm superiority

s they sat side by side on one of the amber

, of course,”

at impressed you most vividly? Your first view of Mont Bla

come to think of it. They’re all blue, and they’re all wet. And Swiss villages, now — don’t you think they are rather disappointing? — such a cruel plagiarism of those plaster chalets the

disgusted look. “I don’t think you ha

n’t,” replied

ur heart thrilled or your mind exalted — you can come home

ave hardly tune to feel the thrill when I came bump up against a party of tourists, English or American, all talking the same twaddle, and all patronising the scenery. That took the charm out of the landsc

Mabel, “but I confess my disappointment. I thought w

If it’s so lovely that one can’t live w

ly with a great fan of cloudy looking feathers, such as Titania might have used that midsummer night

y. He was no longer a beardless boy, to be patronised with that gracious elder-sister air of L

lock with my aunt, and found her quite anxious about you. If it hadn’t been for y

hree o’clock,” answered Rorie coolly; “my

uggage on before, and

fway between here and Lyndhu

d Mabel. “I should have thoug

t seven o’clock, to be speechified about and rendered generally ridiculous, after the mann

d Mabel, with her blue eyes sparkling. “I see.

st rode to hounds it was under his wing. There’s my moth

he spot where his mother stood, with the Duke

ns upon this horse-shoe table made the finest floricultural show that had been seen for a long time. There were rare specimens from New Granada and the Philippine Islands; wondrous flowers lately discovered in the Sierra Madre; blossoms of every shape and colour from the Cordilleras; richest varieties of hue — golden yellow, glowing crimson, creamy white; rare eccentricities of form and colour beside which any other flower would have loo

ening,” Rorie said afterwards. “It

d-by, when the monster double-crowned pines had been cut, and t

attain his majority, he, the Duke, could have hardly felt a deeper interest in the occasion than he felt to-day. He had — arra — arra — known this young

it implied that an English gentleman must ne

orthy thought and yet pass current, according to the loose mo

subdued gush of approval, and then an uncomfortable little pause, and

useful and to do good in this little spot of England which Providence had given him for his inheritance. How, if he should go into Parliament by-and-by, as he had some thoughts o

y I live and die and be buried here. I have just come back from seeing some of the finest scenery in Europe; yet, without blushing for my want of poetry, I will confess that the awful grandeur of those snow-clad mountains did not touch my heart so deeply as our beechen glades and primrose-carpeted bottoms close at home.” There was a burst of applause af

in their native soil nowadays, as they used to be in the old stage-coach times, when it was a long day’s journey to London. One might as well be a vegetable at once if one is to be pinned down to one particular spot of earth. Why, the Twelve Apostl

like one of those trees, than be a homeless nomad with a worl

you spend so li

. The Forest is my home, and Briarwood is

s the Abbey Ho

eases me better than this abode of straight lines a

welvemonth’s legitimate usage would have done. People, looking at the pretty pair, smiled significantly, and concluded that it would be a match, and went home and told less privileged people about the evident att

ort of thing — nothing concrete, or that came to a focus; a succession of airy meanderings, a fairy dance in the treble, a goblin hunt in the bass. But the French chansons, the dainty little melodies with words of infantile innocenc

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