County Society; A Novel (Paperback)

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 II. SELF-COMMUNION. Eveleyn on his return related the result of his visit to his father; suppressing the incident of the hounds, the whole of which were subsequently killed. " You have succeeded quite as well as I expected," said the old gentleman; " Salmon is a very queer creature; I can only account for his very extraordinary conduct by supposing that he is not at all times a responsible being. After dinner," he continued, " go down to the mill?I have not been able to be there to-day?and all men require looking after." Accordingly, at three o'clock, Eveleyn might have been seen walking in the direction of the old buildings; but it was with a very heedless and indifferent air he passed from room to room, addressing a stray observation to a leading hand; and having satisfied himself that everything was going on properly, with a volume of Byron in his pocket, he sauntered out to the river bank, and up beside the stream to the weir, where the water, falling over some five feet of masonry, formed a miniature cascade?then rushing round the sides of the large pool, into which it fell, it finally swept onward into a long flat reach, where it seemed to rest, as if weary with its unusual exertion in the region of the mill-dam. Up and down, backwards and forwards, Eveleyn paced along the banks mechanically, now watching the foam at the foot of the fall, now following dreamily the course of the stream, where it almost stagnated in the meadows below. " How like my little life !" he thought. "A few days ago I made my grand plunge, if not full of hope, at least boldly; and here I am now, sweeping round the pool beneath, as if I had no further course to follow, and only waited for the earth to yawn and swallow me. But the earth does not open, and the stream must proceed...