Explore "Our Lady of Darkness" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Twice again only, before he started for the Continent -- as he persisted in thinking at her sole behest -- was Ned vouchsafed the partial company of his mistress. In each instance he must forego the desire of his heart for a personal interview. Such, by accident or design, was denied him. But he had the satisfaction of being received by madame with an ease and a familiarity that were significant of a quite particular confidence.
On the first occasion he happened upon the ladies out walking in a country lane. They were botanising, under the tutorship of a Bœotian new to him -- a thin, clerical-looking individual, with a little head, appropriately like an anther. The house at Bury was, indeed, a perfect surprise-tub for the uncommon personalities it seemed to have an endless capacity for turning out. Its staff was, perhaps, twenty all told; yet this number, in view of its omniferous faculties, would often appear as self-reproductive as a stage dozen of soldiers walking itself round a rock into a company.