things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a
night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had
extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which
still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been
a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the
Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having
been remodelled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed
into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it
originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth)
it was offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its
ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of
twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it,
so that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand
to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of
its various protuberances which fell so softly upon the warm, weary
brickwork--were of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said,
he could have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants,
several of whom were known to general fame; doing so, however, with an
undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its destiny was not
the least honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion
of the lawn with which we are concerned was not the entrance-front; this
was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide
carpet of turf that covered the level hill-top seemed but the extension
of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a
shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place was furnished,
like a room, with cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with
the books and papers that lay upon the grass. The river was at some
distance; where the ground began to slope the lawn, properly speaking,
ceased. But it was none the less a charming walk down to the water.

The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America thirty
years before, had brought with him, at the top of his baggage, his
American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but he
had kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have
taken it back to his own country with perfect confidence. At present,
obviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his
journeys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the
great rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly

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