Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 8, 2025
Whether the testament he had produced, immediately after the death of the rector, were one that Thornby had forged, or one that my grandfather had actually made but had ordered his executor to destroy, did not at present appear.
Thornby Place should soon be Thornby Abbey, and in the divine consolation of religion John Norton hoped to find escape from the ignominy of life. A grey, winter morning filtered through lace curtains into drawing- rooms typical of a fashionable London neighbourhood and a moderate income. There was neither excess of porcelain, nor of small tables, nor of screens.
Thornby Place is but two stories high, and its spruce walls of Portland stone and ashlar work rise sheer out of the green sward; in front, Doric columns support a heavy entablature, and there are urns at the corners of the building. The six windows on the ground floor are topped with round arches, and coming up the drive the house seems a perfect square.
On coming of age he had spent a few weeks at Thornby Place, but the place, and especially the country, had appeared to him so grossly protestant so entirely occupied with the material well-to-doness of life that he declared he longed to breathe again the breath of his beloved sacristy, that he must away from that close and oppressive atmosphere of the flesh.
I wrote a letter to Uncle Andrew, telling him frankly the situation, that he might know how little choice I had. It was a cold-blooded job making these dispositions, and I hope never to have the like to do again. Presently I heard voices outside, and Faulkner came to the door with Mr. George Mason, the younger, of Thornby, who passed for the chief buck in Virginia. He gave me a cold bow.
My arrival was unexpected: my mother, who was but little inclined to accuse herself, received me with much more satisfaction than embarrassment. The behaviour of Thornby was not quite so self-complacent.
On business matters he never consulted her; but he thought it fortunate that she should choose to spend her jointure on Thornby Place, and so save him a great deal of expense in keeping up the house, which, although he disliked it with a dislike that had grown inveterate, he was still unwilling to allow to fall to ruins.
John Stokes was a well-meaning man, and Mrs. Deborah Thornby was not an ill-meaning woman.
But overhead the great branches fight upwards through a tortuous growth to the sky, and, as you advance, Thornby Place continues to puzzle you with its medley of curious and contradictory aspects. For as the second gate, which is in iron, is approached, your thoughts of rural things are rudely scattered by sight of what seems a London mews. Reason with yourself.
I'll show you over the college: you have never been here before.... Now I come to reckon it up, I find I have not seen you for nearly five years. 'It must be very nearly that; I missed you the last time you were at Thornby Place, and that was three years ago. 'Three years! It sounds very shocking, doesn't it, to have a beautiful place in Sussex and not to live there?
Word Of The Day
Others Looking