Read "Sink or Swim? , Volume I" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On the 23d of July, in the year 186 -- , the day remarkable as that on / which Arthur Vavasour reached his twenty-first birthday, crowds of / people of every degree, and all, as it seemed, on pleasure bent, were / assembled in the park, and along the roads that led towards the / beautiful "seat" known as belonging to the Earl of Guernsey. It was a / pretty place -- not "princely," like Fairleigh, or frowning proudly in / baronial grandeur, after the fashion of noble and time-honoured / Gillingham; but, though inferior in magnificence to its more imposing / neighbours, Danescourt was, after all, a mansion and estate not wholly / unworthy the rank of its owners.
Lady Guernsey, who was country born and bred (albeit one of the most / popular women in England, and perfectly "at home" everywhere), was / greatly attached to Danescourt. She was never so happy -- so said those / who knew her best, for Lady Guernsey was a person who talked very / little about herself -- as when, the London season being over, she could / devote herself at "dear" Danescourt to her garden, her children, and her / poor.