A Righted Wrong: A Novel. Volume 3 (of 3)

Transcriber's Note: 1. Page scan source: web archive; https://archive.org/details/rightedwrongnove03yate/page/n4 (Library of the University of Illinois)
An unusually beautiful day, in an exceptionally beautiful summer, and a grand old mansion, in all its bravery, wearing its best air of preparation and festivity. Even in the merest outline such a picture has its charms; and that which the sunshine lighted up on one particular occasion, about to be described, merited close attention, and the study of its every detail.
Sheltered by a fine plantation, which, in any other than the land of flood and fell, might have been called a forest, and situated on the incline of a conical hill, the low park land, picturesquely planted, stretching away from it, until lost in the boundary of trees beneath,--a large, imposing house, built of gray, cut stone, presented its wide and lofty façade to the light. The architecture was irregular, picturesque, and effective; and now, with its numerous windows, some sparkling in the sunshine, others thrown wide open to admit the sweet air, the Deane had an almost palatial appearance. Along the front ran a wide stone terrace, from which three flights of steps, one in the centre, and one at either end, led down to an Italian garden, intersected by the wide avenue.
Large French windows opened on this stone expanse, and now, in the lazy summer day, the silken curtains were faintly stirring, and the sound of voices, and of occasional low laughter, came softly to the hearing of two persons, a man and a woman, who were seated on a garden bench, in an angle of the terrace. The countless sounds of Nature, which make a music all their own, were around them, and the scene had in it every element of beauty and joy; but these two persons seemed to be but little moved by it, to have little in common with all that surrounded them and with the feelings it was calculated to suggest.
They were for the most part silent, and when they spoke it was sadly and slowly, as they speak upon whom the memory of the past is strong, and who habitually live in it more than in the present. There was a deference in the tone and manner of the woman, which would have made an observer aware that though the utmost kindliness and unrestraint existed in her relations with her companion, she was not his equal in station; and her manner of speaking, though quite free from all that ordinarily constitutes vulgarity, would have betrayed that difference still more plainly.