Explore "A Nine Day's Wonder" by B.M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
From the slated cottage at the corner of a country lane it is a long step to an historical castle in Perthshire. Here the Marquis of Maxwelton is entertaining a large party for the twelfth. His moors are as celebrated as his gaunt old fortress, built after the French fashion, in the time when the Guise family held sway in Scotland. The château has been modernised, and the gardens and grounds are unsurpassed for beauty and originality.
Among the guests are the Earl and Countess of Mulgrave and Miss Tito Dawson -- the Countess's daughter by a former alliance. The ladies are lounging in the gardens, the earl is on the moor with the guns. He is a fine shot and a keen sportsman. A tall, slim man of fifty with clearly cut profile, grizzly hair, and a pair of deep-set, melancholy eyes. He has a polished manner, a pleasant voice, is an agreeable acquaintance and popular landlord; but the real Earl of Mulgrave lives far behind those melancholy eyes, entrenched in an impenetrable reserve. Thus far and no further his guests can go. He is ready to entertain them, to shoot, play billiards, talk politics, and subscribe money; lavish with time and with his fortune, he is niggardly of himself. His life -- how little people guess! -- has for years been one long disappointment.