To have married Mortimer Seltoun, ``Dead Mortimer'' as his
more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold
hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected
indifference to women, was indeed an achievement that had
needed some determination and adroitness to carry through;
yesterday she had brought her victory to its concluding
stage by wrenching her husband away from Town and its group
of satellite watering-places and ``settling him down,'' in
the vocabulary of her kind, in this remote wood-girt manor
farm which was his country house.
``You will never get Mortimer to go,'' his mother had said
carpingly, ``but if he once goes he'll stay; Yessney throws
almost as much a spell over him as Town does. One can
understand what holds him to Town, but Yessney---'' and the
dowager had shrugged her shoulders.
There was a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney
that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes,
and Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to
nothing much more sylvan than ``leafy Kensington.'' She
looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome
in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you
encouraged it overmuch.
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