widowhood succeeded
in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.
It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall
Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of
history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant
creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely
irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one
could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an
auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a
pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by
the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and
nothing mattered.

But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a
romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could
have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to
be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses
of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps,
vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of
the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How
clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so
pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its
refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no
ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful
objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things
rather suggestive than perfect; sketches--fragments--from the great arts
of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set
tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the
eternal defeat of men.

The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham,
mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates. She had created
it through many years; she had been terribly "advised," in the process,
by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result
alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point
is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious.
She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths;
and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was
personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her
rather a c