Read "Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 2" by James Grant online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Much about the time of the disaster we have recorded, some other of our _dramatis persone_ were actors amid a very different scene.
A star-lighted but moonless sky overhung the stately modern mansion of Wilmothurst, and gloomy indeed would the long, wintry avenue have looked, but for the many-coloured lamps that shed a soft radiance from branch to branch, and from one gnarled stem to another, lighting the gravelled way for the fast-rolling carriages that came in quick succession to the Tuscan _porte-cochère_, setting down the shawled and daintily-shod guests, where a scarlet carpeting extended from the doorway to the terrace.