Explore "The Great House" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was about a week after this that two men stood on the neglected lawn, contemplating the long blind front of Beaudelays House. With all its grandeur the house lacked the dignity of ruin, for ruin presumes a past, and the larger part of the Great House had no past. The ancient wing that had welcomed brides, and echoed the laughter of children and given back the sullen notes of the passing-bell did not suffice to redeem the whole. By night the house might pass; the silent bulk imposed on the eye. By day it required no effort of fancy to see the scaffold still clinging to the brickwork, or to discern that the grand entrance had never opened to guest or neighbor, that everyday life had never gazed through the blank windows of the long facade.
The house, indeed, was not only dead. It had never lived.