Project Gutenberg's An Unknown Lover, by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: An Unknown Lover

Author: Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32936]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNKNOWN LOVER ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

An Unknown Lover, by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
AN UNKNOWN LOVER, BY MRS GEORGE DE HORNE VAIZEY.

Part 1--Chapter I.

They were seated together at the breakfast-table, a handsome,
bored-looking man of thirty-three, and a girl of twenty-six, whose dress
of a rich blue made an admirable touch of colour in the dim, brown room.

The house had been designed in the period when shelter from the wind
seems to have been the one desired good, and was therefore built in a
dell, from which the garden rose in a rapid slope. Today the house
would crown the head of the slope, and the dell be relegated to a
retreat for occasional hot afternoons; the breakfast-room would face
east, and the sun stream in through wide bay-windows, from which fact
the spirits of the occupants would benefit afresh with each new morn.
As it was the light filtered dimly through mullioned panes, and the oak
panelled walls gave back no answering gleam. Curtains and carpet alike
were of dull neutral tints, and the one bright spot in the picture was
the blue dress of the girl, who sat behind the coffee urn.

Was she beautiful? Was she merely pretty? Was she redeemed from
plainness only by a certain quality of interest and charm? At different
times an affirmative answer might have been given to each of the three
questions in turns; at the moment Katrine Beverley appeared just a tall,
graceful girl who arranged her hair with a fine eye for the exigencies
of an irregular profile, and who deserved an order of merit for choosing
a dress at once so simple, so artistic, and so becoming.

Martin was enjoying a breakfast menu which he sturdily refused to vary.
Year in, year out, through dog days, and through frost, t