Explore "Sink or Swim? , Volume I" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.