The Mortimer ladies, indeed, had more than once remarked--
but it was in solemn silence, each to herself only--how well the
man sat, and how easily he handled the hunter he always rode; but
not once until now had so much as a greeting passed between them
and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful that Godfrey
should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding, however,
that his mother was distressed at having to go to the gathering
without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was needful
as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it
would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or
two before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical
friend.
The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime
houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they
had at one time formed part of the same property might have
suggested itself to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an
ancestor of Godfrey's, who, forsaking the old nest for the new,
had allowed Thornwick to sink into a mere farmhouse, in which
condition it had afterward become the sole shelter of the
withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of Godfrey's
father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession of
partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its
original modest dignity.
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