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Updated: July 8, 2025
"I never thought about marriage. When do you want me to marry you? I am only seventeen?" "Oh! when you like, later on, only say you will be mine, that you will be mistress of Thornby Place one day, that is all I want." "Then you don't want to pull the house down any more." "No, no; a thousand times no! Say you will be my wife one of these days."
These disagreeable circumstances were in part communicated by my mother and in part by Thornby, who had written to tell me that, if a small advance were made, it must be deducted from the thousand pounds, bequeathed as before mentioned.
He had long since put aside his poem and his trilogy, and now thought of nothing but shooting and riding. He could throw his energies into anything, from writing a poem to playing chuck-farthing. The first meet of the hounds was at Thornby Place, and in the vain hope of marrying her son, Mrs. Norton had invited the young girls of the entire country-side.
A crosser old woman than Mrs. Deborah Thornby was certainly not to be found in the whole village of Hilton. Deborah continued in this life. Her crossness was so far innocent that it hurt nobody except herself. But she was also cross-grained, and that evil quality is unluckily apt to injure other people; and did so very materially in the present instance. Mrs.
She strives with her last strength to free herself from the thrall of the great lianas, and she falls into fresh meshes.... The claws are heard amid the ruins, there is a hirsute smell; she turns with terrified eyes to plead, but she meets only the dull liquorish eyes, and the breath of the obscene animal is on her face. Then she finds herself in the pleasure grounds of Thornby Place.
Below them lay the great green plain, wonderfully level, and so distinct were its hedges that it looked like a chessboard. Thornby Place was hidden in vapour, and further away all was lost in darkness that was almost night. "I am sorry we cannot see the house your house," said John as they descended the chalk road. "It seems so funny to hear you say that, John." "Why?
This detail was especially distasteful to John; he often thought of it when away, and it was one of the many irritating impressions which went to make up the sum of his dislike of Thornby Place. Mrs Norton is now crying her last orders to the servants; and although dressed elaborately as if to receive visitors, she has not yet laid aside her basket of keys. She is in her forty-fifth year.
Every woman in the county used to come, and they used to stay to tea, and you used to insist on a great number remaining to supper." "Well, you can put a stop to all that now that you have consented to come to Thornby Place, only I hope you don't expect me to remain here to see my friends insulted." "But just think of the expense! and in these bad times.
But there is in the character, I was almost going to say in the atmosphere of the room, that same undefinable, easily recognizable something which proclaims the presence of non-readers. The traces of three or four days, at the most a week, which John occasionally spent at Thornby Place, were necessarily ephemeral, and the weakness of Mrs Norton's sight rendered continuous reading impossible.
Mrs Norton, in her own hard, cold way, loved her son, but in truth she thought more of the power of which he was the representative than of the man himself: the power to take to himself a wife a wife who would give an heir to Thornby Place.
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