What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of
the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies'
Garden, alone?--for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the
Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of
what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel
walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple
blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
breeze touched it?
Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
less meaning the difference between thousands and millions.
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