Explore "The Prisoner in the Opal" by A.E.W. Mason on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mr. Ricardo progressed in a leisurely fashion from Bordeaux, staying a day here and a night there, and arrived at the Château Suvlac at six o'clock on the evening of the twenty-first of September, a Wednesday. The day of the week is important. For the last mile he had driven along a private road which sloped gently upwards. On the top of this rise stood the house, a deep quadrangle of rose-pink stone with its two squat round turrets breaking the line of the main building at each end, and the two long wings stretching out to the road. The front of the quadrangle was open, and in the middle of this space rose a high arch completely by itself, like some old triumphal arch of Rome. This side of the house looked to the southwest, and the ground fell away from it in a slope of vineyard to a long and wide level of pasture. At the end of this plain of grass there rose a definite hill upon which, through a screen of trees, a small white house could just be seen. As Mr. Ricardo stood with his back to the Château Suvlac, stretching his legs after his long drive, he saw that a secondary road struck off at the end of the sloping vineyard, descended the incline, passed a group of farm buildings and a garage just where the vineyard joined the pastureland, but on the opposite side of the road, and climbed again towards the small white house.
No one of the house party was at home except the aunt and chaperon, Mrs. Tasborough, who was lying down. Mr. Ricardo was served with a cup of tea by Jules Amadée, the young manservant, in the big drawing-room, which opened on to the stone terrace and looked out over the wide Gironde to the misty northern shore. Having drunk his tea he sauntered out on to the terrace. Four shallow steps led down into a garden of lawns and flowers, and on his right hand a closely planted avenue of trees sloped almost to the hedge at the bottom of the garden, sheltering the house and shutting out from its view the massive range of chäis where the wine was stored and the big vats were housed.