END OF BOOK I
BOOK II
THE DESERTER
CHAPTER I
Apsley Manor was one of those residences to be found scattered over
the country, which are vaguely described as Tudor--memorials to the
cultured taste in England, before the restoration with its sponge
of Puritanical Piety wiped out the last traces of that refinement
which Normandy had lent. Britain was destined to be great in commerce,
and not even the inoculation of half the blood of France could ever
make her people great in art as well.
It would be difficult to say the exact date when Apsley Manor was
built. Certain it was that Elizabeth, in one of her progresses--the
resort of a clever woman to fill a needy purse--had stayed there on
her way to Oxford. The room, the bed even in which she was supposed
to have slept, still remain there. Each owner, as he parted with the
property, exacted a heavy premium upon that doubtful relic of history.
None of them wished to remove it from the room where it had so many
romantic associations; but they one and all had used it as a lever
to raise the price of the property--if only a hundred pounds--beyond
that which they had, in the first case, paid for it themselves.
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