Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III AT four that afternoon Odd, his wife, and Mary started for the Archinards' house. Mary had offered to join her brother; the prospect of the walk together was very pleasant. She could not object when Alicia, at the last moment, announced her intention of going too. " I have never been to see her. I should like the walk, and Mary will approve of the fulfilment of my duty towards my neighbor." Mary's prospects were decidedly nipped in the bud, as Alicia perhaps intended that they should be; but Alicia's avowed motive was so praiseworthy that Mary allowed herself only an inner discontent, and, what with her good-humored demeanor, Odd's placid chat of crops and tenantry, and Alicia's acquiescent beauty, the trio seemed to enjoy the mile of beechwood and country road and the short sweep of prettily wooded drive that led to Allersley Priory, a square stone house covered with vines of magnolia and wisteria, and incorporating in its walls, according to tradition, portions of the old Priory which once occupied the site. From the back of the house sloped a wide expanse of lawn and shrubberies, and past it ran the river that half a mile further on flowed out of Captain Archinard's little property into Odd's.The drawing-room was on the groundfloor, and its windows opened on this view. Mrs. Archinard and the Captain were talking to young Lord Hope, the eldest son of Lord Main- waring. Mrs. Archinard's invalidism was evidently not altogether fictitious. She had a look of at once extreme fragility and fading beauty. One knew at the first glance that she was a woman to have cushions behind her and her back to the light. There was no character in the delicate head, unless one can call a passive determination to do or feel nothing that required energy, character. The two l...