Mr. Jervis, Volume I by B. M. Croker — Read

The French windows of Mrs. Langrishe's drawing-room opened into a deep stone verandah embowered in honeysuckle and passion flowers, and commanded a matchless view, irrespective of the foreground, in which Mrs. Sladen's rickshaw is the chief feature, or the gravel sweep, grass garden, and beds of pale wintry roses; but beyond the pineclad hills, among which red roofs are peeping, beyond the valley of rhododendrons, and a bold purple range, behold the snows! a long, long barrier of the everlasting hills, to such as the eyes of the psalmist had never been lifted. People may whisper that they were disappointed in the Taj, that Delhi was a delusion, and the marble rocks a snare; but who can declare that the snows were beneath his expectations? And if he were to say so, who would be found to believe him? The evening breeze is raw and chill, it has travelled sixty miles from those icy slopes, it creeps up the khud, and warns the shivering roses that the sun has set -- it stirs the solemn deodars as they stand in dark outline against the sky.

Mrs. Langrishe, rising from her writing-table, letter in hand, sweeps back to her friend, who is again sitting on the fender-stool, staring into the fire, thinking, perchance, of those bygone days when _she_ was a girl whose friends were anxious to get her settled.