Blake's Burden by Harold Bindloss

Dinner was finished at Sandymere, Miss Challoner had gone out, and, in accordance with ancient custom, the cloth had been removed from the great mahogany table. Its glistening surface was only broken by a decanter, two choice wine-glasses, and a tall silver candlestick. There were lamps in other parts of the room, but Challoner liked candles. Lighting a cigar, Blake looked about while he braced himself for the ordeal that must be faced.

He knew the big room well, but its air of solemnity, with which the heavy Georgian furniture was in keeping, impressed him. The ceiling had been decorated by a French artist of the eighteenth century and the faded delicacy of the design, bearing as it did the stamp of its period, helped to give the place a look of age. Challoner could trace his descent much further than his house and furniture suggested, but the family had first come to the front in the East India Company's wars, and while maintaining its position afterwards had escaped the modernizing influence of the country's awakening in the early Victorian days. It seemed to Blake, fresh from the new and democratic West, that his uncle, shrewd and well-informed man as he was, was very much of the type of Wellington's officers. For all that he pitied him. Challoner looked old and worn, and there were wrinkles that hinted at anxious thought round his eyes.