bliss."



CHAPTER 20

The duke was one of the few gentlemen in, London who lived in a palace.
One of the half-dozen of those stately structures that our capital
boasts had fallen to his lot.

An heir-apparent to the throne, in the earlier days of the present
dynasty, had resolved to be lodged as became a prince, and had raised,
amid gardens which he had diverted from one of the royal parks, an
edifice not unworthy of Vicenza in its best days, though on a far more
extensive scale than any pile that favored city boasts. Before the
palace was finished, the prince died, and irretrievably in debt. His
executors were glad to sell to the trustees of the ancestors of the
chief of the house of Brentham the incomplete palace, which ought never
to have been commenced. The ancestor of the duke was by no means so
strong a man as the duke himself, and prudent people rather murmured at
the exploit. But it was what is called a lucky family -- that is to
say, a family with a charm that always attracted and absorbed heiresses;
and perhaps the splendor of CRECY HOUSE -- for it always retained its
original title -- might have in some degree contributed to fascinate the
taste or imagination of the beautiful women who, generation after
generation, brought their bright castles and their broad manors to swell
the state and rent-rolls of the family who were so kind to Lothair.

The centre of Crecy House consisted of a hall of vast proportion, and
reaching to the roof. Its walls commemorated, in paintings by the most