'Lovely, as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
gloating over that delicious landscape.'
Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.
While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
a summer evening.
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