Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III. FATHER AND SON. Whatever might be said against Hillsland Hall, it had certainly size to recommend it; no one could call it "a one-horse affair," or even a pair-horse; it was a four-horse van—a caravan—of the first magnitude. As to its architecture, it had something to suit almost every taste, and a great deal that suited none. It was commenced by Mr. Stratton's orders, so that when he arrived in England he should find a mansion suitable to his position and requirements, and the F.S.A. who had been entrusted with it had, perhaps in obedience to his patron's injunctions that it should be "light and airy," leant to the Italian style. It was a palace with a verandah running round it, a hall of great splendour in its centre paved with exquisite mosaic, and as many apartments, all more or less draughty, as an American hotel. The Commissioner had so far approved, but requested that something should be imparted to it to remind the beholder of the gorgeous East. Whereupon certain minarets had been erected side by side with the campanilla, and so much more air introduced that when the shivering proprietor came home to it he found it utterly uninhabitable. Then another architect was called in, who, if he could have had his will, would not have left one stone upon another, but who was obliged to content himself with fronting the pile anew, so that it had the resemblance of a gigantic toy enclosed, for purposes of travel, in a gothic box. But even that did not keep the draughts from being too much for the Commissioner's delicate frame; he had forgotten during his gilded exile what the English climate was even in Cornwall, and it was brought to his remembrance in a very unpleasant manner. So that within his castle, he had as it were built another for warmth and comfort—which afterwards turned out ve... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.