Read "The Prisoners of Hartling" by J.D. Beresford online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The garden was certainly wonderful. The modern house, although it had a well-designed south elevation, in which effective use had been made of mullioned oriel windows corbelled out from the first floor, was less successful inside -- if the architect's intention had been to give the impression of age and dignity. The decoration and arrangement conveyed the effect of a really first-class hotel rather than that of an Elizabethan Manor, or even of a gentleman's country-house. This may have been due to the fact that it had been built in the late 'seventies of the last century, a bad period for country-house architecture; or it may have been a result of the exercise of old Mr Kenyon's domestic taste in furniture arrangement.
No such indictment could be brought against the garden. It was unique in its variety -- full of contrasts and surprises; a place to explore, and to get lost in, but more particularly a place that had a dozen settings from which the seeker might choose a mood.