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As Lord Ballindine rode through the gates, and up the long approach to the house, he was so satisfied of the wisdom of his own final resolution, and of the successful termination of his embassy under such circumstances, that he felt relieved of the uncomfortable sensation of fear which had oppressed him; and it was only when the six-foot high, powdered servant told him, with a very solemn face, that the earl was alone in the book-room the odious room he hated so much that he began again to feel a little misgiving.
The ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull in the book-room on the dullest day. "Did you come together?" Mrs. Morres asked curiously. "I swear we did not," Sir Robin replied, with mock intensity. "I came from the east, Miss Gray from the west. We met on your doorstep." "You looked as if you were enjoying a joke when you came in."
"I have had a long conversation with him," continued the earl, "in the book-room, and I think I have convinced him that it is for your mutual happiness" he paused, for he couldn't condescend to tell a lie; but in his glib, speechifying manner, he was nearly falling into one "mutual happiness" was such an appropriate prudential phrase that he could not resist the temptation; but he corrected himself "at least, I think I have convinced him that it is impossible that he should any longer look upon Miss Wyndham as his future wife."
Pride and doubt, too, had kept him within doors, when the Vicar and the people of the village, and the servants of the house, had gone out to welcome my Lord Castlewood for Henry Esmond was no servant, though a dependent; no relative, though he bore the name and inherited the blood of the house; and in the midst of the noise and acclamations attending the arrival of the new lord, for whom a feast was got ready, and guns were fired, and tenants and domestics huzzahed when his carriage rolled into the court-yard of the Hall, no one took any notice of young Henry Esmond, who sat alone in the book-room until his new friends found him.
"And now the others are gone," said Mother, "since you won't let the Christmas-tree be put off, I propose that we have it up, and I dress it under your orders, whilst the others are out, and then it can be moved into the little book-room, all ready for to-night." Madam Liberality nodded like a china Mandarin. "But you are in sad pain, I fear?" said her mother,
It was, at last, however, over; and the father requested the son to come with him into the book-room. When the fire was poked, and the chairs were drawn together over the rug, there were no further preliminaries which could be decently introduced, and the earl was therefore forced to commence. "Well, Kilcullen, I'm glad you're come to Grey Abbey.
When it was ended, she turned to me, and said with mild dignity "Fetch me 'Rasselas, my dear, out of the book-room." When I had brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown "Now allow me to read you a scene, and then the present company can judge between your favourite, Mr Boz, and Dr Johnson."
She had feared that Arthur would come: but Arthur had dreaded the meeting also; and, having talked the matter over with his sisters, had remained at home. He was in the book-room, and hearing the wheels, as the carriage drew up to the door, he went out to greet his mother on the steps. At the first moment of meeting there was nothing said, but she warmly pressed the hand which he held out to her.
Grizel where, in a most housewifely corner, she measured currants and bargained with pickers of cherries. Strickland they came upon in the book-room. With the Jardines and this gentleman the sense of employed and employee had long ago passed into a larger inclusion. He and the young laird talked and worked together as members of one family.
These letters she burnt usually, though sometimes she made little boats of them and floated them out to sea, and sometimes she pushed them into the shifting sands through fissures on Lashnagar. They comforted her strangely; they were adoration and love crystallized. Her only friendliness came from Hunchback Wullie, when she could escape from the book-room and run down to his hut.
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