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It is a miniature castle, such as might serve for an opera scene. An extension of the galleries, an ombre, completes the circle around the plot of close-clipped green turf. The house itself is all balconies, galleries, odd windows half overgrown and hidden by ivy, and a large gilt clock-face adds a touch of piquancy to the antique charm of the facade.
He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so sleepy. It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with chloroform near his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness that lay hold of him. He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disk of light that seemed like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the clock-face for which he had been on the lookout.
He had passed it before he realized this; but the fact stirred him into wakefulness again, and when his cab's wheels slipped around the City Hall corner, he remembered to look up at the other big clock-face that keeps awake over the railroad station and measures out the night. He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past two, and that there was but ten minutes left to him.
On one side, close to the church, rose a building quite detached from and taller than the rest, probably the town-hall or some official structure. It was two stories high, and above it, on two arches, rose a belvedere where a watchman stood; a huge clock-face was let into the roof. The square seemed deserted, but Andrii thought he heard a feeble groan.
Be mollified; leave thy caverned grumblings, like Etna when its windy wrath is past, and discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness ventriloquizing." "If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh " said the giant's clock-face, in a piteous tone. "I laugh not. Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire? Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you."
In the afternoon the sun struck through the windows and through the glass door, brightening the tall clock-face, the faint gilt and brown of old books, and the portrait of Henry Churchill with the swords crossed beneath. Upon the forenoon in question, and even though the month was May, the room looked a sombre place, chill and dusk, shaded and grave as a hermit's cell.
He was driving noiselessly over the snow and slush in the street, with his thoughts bent only on the clock-face he wished so much to see, when a hoarse voice challenged him from the sidewalk. "Hey, you, stop there, hold up!" said the voice.
The general plan of this façade is the masterpiece of design of the building, and, except for the ludicrously diminutive clock-face, could withstand nobly the cavil of the most exacting pedant who ever read or studied architectural forms, solely out of books. In the immediate foreground falls the before mentioned street of steps.
He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so sleepy. It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with chloroform near his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness that lay hold of him. He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disc of light that seemed like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the clock-face for which he had been on the lookout.
Isabel read all this as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's rage as if Osmond had locked her into her room which she was sure was what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to Ralph.