The visit was grotesque.
He ought to have written. He ought, at any rate, to have announced his
visit by a note. Yet only an hour earlier he had been arguing that he
could most easily capture the Countess by storm, with no warning or
preparations of any kind.
Then, from a lateral path, a closed carriage and pair drove rapidly up
to the Hall, and a footman bounced off the hammercloth. Denry could not
see through the carriage, but under it he could distinguish the skirts
of some one who got put of it. Evidently the Countess was just returning
from a drive. He quickened his pace, for at heart he was an audacious
boy.
"She can't eat me," he said.
This assertion was absolutely irrefutable, and yet there remained in his
bold heart an irrational fear that after all she _could_ eat him.
Such is the extraordinary influence of a Palladian facade!
After what seemed several hours of torture entirely novel in his
experience, he skirted the back of the carriage and mounted the steps to
the portal. And, although the coachman was innocuous, being apparently
carved in stone, Denry would have given a ten-pound note to find himself
suddenly in his club or even in church.
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