Excerpt from Venetia, Rise of Iskander: And Other Stories
The ground-floor was principally occupied by the hall itself, which of course was of great dimensions, hung round with many a family portrait and rural picture, furnished with long oaken seats, covered with scarlet cushions, and ornamented with a party-colored floor of alternate diamonds of black and white marble. From the center of the roof of the mansion, which was always covered with pigeons, rose the clock-tower of the chapel, surmounted by a vane; and, before the mansion itself, was a large plot of grass, with a fountain in its middle, surrounded by a hedge of honeysuckle.
This plot of grass was separated from an extensive park, that opened in front of the hall, by very tall iron gates, on each of the pillars of which was a lion rampant, supporting the escutcheon of the family. The deer wandered in this inclosed and well-wooded demesne, and about a mile from the mansion, in a direct line with the iron gates, was an old-fashioned lodge, which marked the limit of the park, and from which you emerged into a very line avenue of limes, bounded on both sides by fields. At the termination of this avenue was a strong but simple gate, and a woodman's cottage; and then spread before you a vast landscape of open, wild land, which seemed on one side interminable, while on the other the eye rested on the dark heights of the neighboring forest.
This picturesque, and very secluded abode, was the residence of Lady Annabel Herbert and her daughter, the young and beautiful Venetia, a child, at the time when our history commences, of very tender age. It was nearly seven years since Lady Annabel and her infant daughter had sought the retired shades of Cherbury, which they had never since quitted. They lived alone and for each other; the mother educated her child, and the child interested her mother by her affectionate disposition, the development of a mind of no ordinary promise, and a sort of captivating grace and charming playfulness of temper, which were extremely delightful. Lady Annabel was still young and very lovely. That she was wealthy her establishment clearly denoted, and she was a daughter of one of the haughtiest houses in the kingdom.
It was strange then that with all the brilliant accidents of birth, and beauty, and fortune, she should still, as it were in the morning of her life, have withdrawn to this secluded mansion, in a county where she was personally unknown, distant from the metropolis, estranged from all her own relatives and connections, and without the resource of even a single neighbor, for the only place of importance in her vicinity was uninhabited. The general impression of the villagers was that Lady Annabel was a widow; and yet there were some speculators who would shrewdly remark, that her ladyship had never worn weeds, although, if Venetia were her only child, her husband could not have been long dead when she first arrived at Cherbury.
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