The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

CHAPTER X
Trouble at Windles
1
MR. RUFUS BENNETT stood at the window of the drawing-room
of Windles, looking out. From where he stood
he could see all those natural and artificial charms which
had made the place so desirable to him when he first
beheld them. Immediately below, flower beds, bright
with assorted blooms, pressed against the ivied stone
wall of the house. Beyond, separated from these by a
gravel pathway, a smooth lawn, whose green and silky
turf rivalled the lawns of Oxford colleges, stretched to
a picturesque shrubbery, not so dense as to withhold
altogether from the eye of the observer an occasional
silvery glimpse of the lake that lay behind it. To the
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Girl</strong> on the Boat
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left, through noble trees, appeared a white suggestion
of old stable yards; while to the right, bordering on the
drive as it swept round to a distant gate, nothing less
than a fragment of a ruined castle reared itself against
a background of firs.
It had been this sensational fragment of Old England
which had definitely captured Mr. Bennett on his first
visit to the place. He could not have believed that the
time would ever come when he could gaze on it without
any lightening of the spirits.
<strong>The</strong> explanation of his gloom was simple. In addition
to looking at the flower beds, the lawn, the shrubbery,
the stable yard, and the castle, Mr. Bennett was
also looking at the fifth heavy shower that had fallen
since breakfast. This was the third afternoon of his tenancy.
<strong>The</strong> first day it had rained all the time. <strong>The</strong> second
day it had rained from eight till twelve-fifteen, from
twelve-thirty till four, and from five till eleven. And on
this, the third day, there had been no intermission
longer than ten minutes. It was a trying Summer. Even
the writers in the daily papers seemed mildly surprised,