The servants, even the women, had been tutored into silence. Profound
stillness reigned throughout and around the Abbey, except when the
occasional shutting of a door would peal in long reverberations
through the galleries, or the heavy tread of the pensive butler would
wake the hollow echoes of the hall. Scythrop stalked about like the
grand inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like familiars. In
his evening meditations on the terrace, under the ivy of the ruined
tower, the only sounds that came to his ear were the rustling of the
wind in the ivy, the plaintive voices of the feathered choristers, the
owls, the occasional striking of the Abbey clock, and the monotonous
dash of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean time, he drank
Madeira, and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy
fabric of human nature.
* * * * *
CHAPTER III
Mr Glowry returned from London with the loss of his lawsuit. Justice
was with him, but the law was against him. He found Scythrop in a
mood most sympathetically tragic; and they vied with each other in
enlivening their cups by lamenting the depravity of this degenerate
age, and occasionally interspersing divers grim jokes about graves,
worms, and epitaphs.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29