ramps in the snow, and a
general flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes. He had
just received a box of new books from his London book-seller, and had
preferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils. But
he now went into the club writing-room, wrote a hurried telegram, and
told the servant to send it immediately. He knew that Mrs. Reggie
didn't object to her visitors' suddenly changing their minds, and that
there was always a room to spare in her elastic house.

XV.

Newland Archer arrived at the Chiverses' on Friday evening, and on
Saturday went conscientiously through all the rites appertaining to a
week-end at Highbank.

In the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few
of the hardier guests; in the afternoon he "went over the farm" with
Reggie, and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and
impressive disquisitions on the horse; after tea he talked in a corner
of the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself
broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to
tell him of her own matrimonial hopes; and finally, about midnight, he
assisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a
burglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours
by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the
basement. But on Sunday after luncheon he borrowed a cutter, and drove
over to Skuytercliff.

People had always been told that the house at Skuytercliff was an
Italian villa. Those who had never been to Italy believed it; so did
some who had. The house had been built by Mr. van der Luyden in his
youth, on his return from the "grand tour," and in anticipation of his
approaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonet. It was a large square
wooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and
white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows.
From the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by
balustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small
irregular lake with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers.
To the right and left, the famous weedless lawns studded with
"specimen" trees (each of a different variety) rolled away to long
ranges of grass crested with elaborate cast-iron ornaments; and below,
in a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house which the first Patroon
had built on the land grante