Explore "Chippinge Borough" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was about a week before his encounter with Vaughan in the park-and on a fine autumn day-that the Honourable Bob, walking with Sir Robert by the Garden Pool, allowed his eyes to travel over the prospect. The smooth-shaven lawns, the stately, lichened house, the far-stretching park, with its beech-knolls and slopes of verdure, he found all fair; and when to these, when to the picture on which his bodily eyes rested, that portrait of Mary-Mary, in white muslin and blue ribbons, bowing her graceful head while Sir Robert read prayers-which he carried in his memory, he told himself that he was an uncommonly happy fellow.
Beauty he might have had, wealth he might have had, family too. But to alight on all in such perfection, to lose his heart where his head approved the step, was a gift of fortune so rare, that as he strutted and talked by the side of his host, his face beamed with ineffable good-humour.