Explore "Sydney Cove" by J.H.M. Abbott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
NEARLY two years before, a retired London merchant, named Peter Urquhart, had leased a house in the close neighborhood of Magnus Hall, and soon after taking up his residence there had died suddenly, and a little mysteriously. It was given out that he had been in a dying condition with cancer when he came to dwell in the country--indeed, that his sole object in coming there had been that he might end his days in peace, away from the noise and turmoil of the city. His half-sister--a somewhat disagreeable and sourly religious maiden lady, who professed some bitter branch of an aggressive Calvinism--had controlled his household, and there was an only daughter, a very beautiful and accomplished girl, somewhere about twenty years of age, who was the solace and joy at her unhappy parent's latter days.
At that time, the ship on which Patrick was serving, H.M.S.