Desolate splendour

THE avenue sloped upward from the meeting-place of the five rides to where, grandiose on the line of the horizon, tall, wrought-iron gates fenced off a space of sky. Through the...

IN the year that Queen Victoria died Viola Marvell came to Morvane. She was twenty-one, an orphan from beyond the seas, well grown, laconic, a creature of quiet, firm movements...

CHARLES PLETHERN mixed his drink and, full length in a deck chair, allowed the velvet brilliance of the June afternoon to stroke with its soft fingers his pleasurable fatigue. C...

FOR more than one reason Viola was glad to leave Gloucestershire for a short London visit. If challenged, she would probably have said that she wanted some clothes, or was eager...

LEAVING his ward in the care of his brother’s family, Charles returned to Gloucestershire. He had two good months before him in which to reflect upon the future, for Lady Grieve...

LEAVE Grays to puzzle and leave guardian Charles to plot a marriage and to paint his house against its autumn festival. The former, fate had cast for the odd rôle of an unhappy...

That same girl, at Lavenham in August, was put finally to school, settled finally to her examination in the grammar of young womanhood. Beyond grammar lies idiom, (and Viola was...

THE August weeks went by and Viola prepared herself for a return to Morvane. Lady Grieve had wondered what the guardian would, when he saw her, think of his ward, but she spared...

IN due course Charles Plethern’s autumn guests assembled. The Grieves were among the first to come. The very afternoon of her arrival at Morvane, Lady Grieve tackled her old fri...

WITH October the first fine rains of autumn came slanting from the west, staining the gold-brown tapestry of woodland with their inexorable fingers. Mist curled about the shrubs...

IT was toward the end of this same October that first Charles showed real sign of restlessness under the yoke of his responsibilities. Autumn was dead; drowned by the relentless...

“She is a very smart and amusing little American. I knew her before she married. As a matter of fact, she is now Madame la Comtesse of something or other, so there is no Molly L...

“You can go now, Laura,” said the earl. “Donchet will give you your money. I can’t send you home, as I need the carriage. Good afternoon. I’ll let you know when I want you again.”

“Smart work getting in so quickly,” he explained gleefully. “Uncle Charles did the trick for me. Put me up, chose my seconder and collected men to sign their names. I’m fearfull...

DID Viola herself believe in the sweet altruism of her filial duty? She talked of saving Charles from his own restless self; was it an impulse of pure rectitude that inspired he...

IT was with some trepidation that Mrs. Plethern had sealed her letter of summons to Rockarvon--summons it was, for all its flattering humility of phrase--because she was uncerta...

THE porter at White’s sorted mechanically the morning’s letters, pigeon-holing those for which members would be calling, piling the others to be re-addressed. Things were contra...

QUITE early in the afternoon old Mrs. Plethern had begun preparations for an evening that should at once pander to her taste for macabre cruelty and mark the achievement of her...