neighbourhood unparalleled in beauty and convenience--outbuildings
that must have been the very archetypes of barns and stables--a house
which to inhabit would be to adore. But as yet he had seen none of
these peerless domains. He was waiting for decent weather in which to
run down to the West and "look about him," as he said to himself. In
the meantime the blustrous March weather, which was so unsuited to long
railroad journeys, and all that waiting about at junctions and at
little windy stations on branch lines, incidental to the inspection of
estates scattered over a large area of country, served very well for
"jolly-dog-ism;" and what with a hand at cards in George Sheldon's
chambers, and another hand at cards in somebody else's chambers, and a
run down to an early meeting at Newmarket, and an evening at some
rooms where there was something to be seen which was as near
prize-fighting as the law allowed, and other evenings in unknown
regions, Mr. Halliday found time slipping by him, and his domestic
peace vanishing away.

It was on an evening at the end of this third week that Mr. Sheldon
abandoned his mechanical dentistry for once in a way, and ascended to
the drawing-room where poor Georgy sat busy with that eternal
needlework, but for which melancholy madness would surely overtake many
desolate matrons in houses whose common place comfort and respectable
dulness are more dismal than the picturesque dreariness of a moated
grange amid the Lincolnshire fens. To the masculine mind this
needlework seems nothing more than a purposeless stabbing and sewing of
strips of calico; but to lonely womanhood it is the prison-flower of
the captive, it is the spider of Latude.

Mr. Sheldon brought his guest an evening newspaper.