Abington Abbey: A Novel

Copyright, 1917
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

I believe I've got the very house, Cara.
Have you, darling? It's the fifty-third.
Ah, but you wait till you see. Abington Abbey. What do you think of that for a name? Just come into the market. There are cloisters, and a chapel. Stew ponds. A yew walk. Three thousand acres, and a good head of game. More can be had by arrangement, and we'll arrange it. Presentation to living. We'll make Bunting a parson, and present him to it. Oh, it's the very thing. I haven't told you half. Come and have a look at it.
George Grafton spread out papers and photographs on a table. His daughter, Caroline, roused herself from her book and her easy chair in front of the fire to come and look at them. He put his arm around her slim waist and gave her a kiss, which she returned with a smile. Darling old George, she said, settling his tie more to her liking, I sometimes wish you weren't quite so young. You let yourself in for so many disappointments.
George Grafton did look rather younger than his fifty years, in spite of his grey hair. He had a fresh complexion and a pair of dark, amused, alert eyes. His figure was that of a young man, and his daughter had only settled his tie out of affection, for it and the rest of his clothes were perfect, with that perfection which comes from Bond Street and Savile Row, the expenditure of considerable sums of money, and exact knowledge and taste in such matters. He was, in fact, as agreeable to the eye as any man of his age could be, unless you were to demand evidences of unusual intellectual power, which he hadn't got, and did very well without.
As for his eldest daughter Caroline, her appeal to the eye needed no qualification whatever, for she had, in addition to her attractions of feature and colouring, that adorable gift of youth, which, in the case of some fortunate beings, seems to emanate grace. It was so with her. At the age of twenty there might have been some doubt as to whether she could be called beautiful or only very pretty, and the doubt would not be resolved for some few years to come. She had delicate, regular features, sweet eyes, a kind smiling mouth, a peach-like soft-tinted skin, nut-coloured hair with a wave in it, a slender column of a neck, with deliciously modulated curves of breast and shoulders. She looked thorough-bred, was fine at the extremities, clean-boned and long in the flank, and moved with natural grace and freedom. Half of these qualities belonged to her youth, which was so living and palpitating in her as to be a quality of beauty in itself.