eBooks Base 2000

Young Tom Verity, having no convenient armour-plating of stupidity,
suffered its influence intimately as--looking about him with quick
enquiring glances--he followed the man-servant across it between the
dumpy pillars. He felt self-conscious and disquieted, as by a smile of
silent amusement upon some watchful elderly face. So impressed, indeed,
was he that, on reaching the door, he paused, letting the man pass on
alone to announce him. He wanted time in which to get over this queer
sensation of shyness, before presenting himself to the company assembled,
there, in the garden outside.
Yet he was well aware that the prospect out of doors--its amplitude of
mellow sunlight and of space, its fair windless calm in which no leaf
stirred--was far more attractive than the room in the doorway of which he
thus elected to linger.
For the glass-door gave directly on to an extensive lawn, set out,
immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in
alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds.


Pages:
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46