It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect
who loved the milder "Gothic motives" had built what he liked: it was
to be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had
wrought a picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality.
At the same time a landscape-designer had played so good a second,
with ready-made accessories of screen, approach and vista, that
already whatever look of newness remained upon the place was to its
advantage, as showing at least one thing yet clean under the grimy
sky. For, though the smoke was thinner in this direction, and at this
long distance from the heart of the town, it was not absent, and under
tutelage of wind and weather could be malignant even here, where cows
had wandered in the meadows and corn had been growing not ten years
gone.

Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those
architects' successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy;
it revealed nothing of the people who lived in it save that they
were rich. There are houses that cannot be detached from their own
people without protesting: every inch of mortar seems to mourn the
separation, and such a house--no matter what be done to it--is ever
murmurous with regret, whispering the old name sadly to itself
unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind to change hands without
emotion. In our swelling cities, great places of its type are useful
as financial gauges of the business tides; rich families, one after
another, take title and occupy such houses as fortunes rise and fall
--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to imagine a child's toy
wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New House, and yet it was
--as Bibbs rightly called it--"beautiful."