vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of
the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How
clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so
pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its
refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no
ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful
objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things
rather suggestive than perfect; sketches--fragments--from the great arts
of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set
tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the
eternal defeat of men.

The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham,
mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates. She had created
it through many years; she had been terribly "advised," in the process,
by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result
alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point
is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious.
She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths;
and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was
personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her
rather a critic than a supporter. The follies of her own class were
particularly plain to her; her relations, with their great names, and
great "places," seemed to her often the most ridiculous persons in the
world--a world no longer made for them. But one must hasten to add that
she was no less aware of her own absurdities; so that the ironic mind in
her robbed her both of conceit for herself and enthusiasm for others.

Two or three days after the storming of Threlfall Tower, Lady Tatham came
in from a mountain ramble at tea-time, expecting her son, who had been