Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
One morning late in April Geraldine Seagrave rode up under the porte-cochère with her groom, dismounted, patted her horse sympathetically, and regarded with concern the limping animal as the groom led him away to the stables. Then she went upstairs. To Kathleen, who was preparing to go out, she said: "I had scarcely entered the Park, my dear, when poor Bibi pulled up lame.
Faced with stone as far back as the dining-room windows, it was a house of arches and turrets and girdling stone porches: it had the first porte-cochere seen in that town. There was a central "front hall" with a great black walnut stairway, and open to a green glass skylight called the "dome," three stories above the ground floor.
In the exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is the moment in which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments within which he was subject to our examination and has escaped into the street! At this point a man of understanding when he sees a visitor passing under the porte-cochere should be able to divine the import of the whole visit.
Her hat was a practical affair of straw, unadorned save by a black ribbon. As she drew on her gloves in the porte-cochère the old coachman held the heads of two horses that were hitched to a smart road wagon. When her gloves had been adjusted, Mrs. Owen surveyed the horses critically. "Lift Pete's forefoot the off one, Joe," she commanded, stepping down into the asphalt court.
She brought the car to a stop under the porte-cochère, and announced her arrival by several loud blasts of the automobile-horn; a moment later, the doors were thrown open, and Sally Gardner rushed out to receive her. "I am afraid I am late, Sally," Patricia called out, in a voice that was wholly unlike her usual calm tones. "Will you call someone to care for the car?"
The great porte-cochere was wide open, and, pressing through it, and surrounding the stately building at every point was a vast crowd, densely packed and almost absolutely silent. Quite up to the inner portico these waiting thousands pressed, though, as they recognised the Royal liveries, they did their best to make immediate way, and a low murmur arose "Evviva il Re!"
As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels.
It came to pass before he moved that Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively strengthened, struck him as the present alternative to the young man in the balcony. When he did move it was fairly to escape that alternative. Taking his way over the street at last and passing through the porte-cochere of the house was like consciously leaving Waymarsh out.
The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into the convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old nurse, Modeste.
Through it they passed like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered by their nurses. "Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?" At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochère.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking