Apperley, the _Life of Assheton Smith_, and all the volumes
of the original _Sporting Magazine_ bound in crimson russia. These, with
_Ruff's Guide_, the _Racing Calendar_, and a few volumes on farriery,
supplied Mr. Armstrong's literary necessities. But to Clarissa, for whom
books were at once the pleasure and consolation of life, this library
seemed a treasure-house of inexhaustible delights. Her father's collection
was of the choicest, but limited. Here she found everything she had ever
heard of, and a whole world of literature she had never dreamed of. She was
not by any means a pedant or a blue-stocking, and it was naturally amongst
the books of a lighter class she found the chief attraction; but she was
better read than most girls of her age, and better able to enjoy solid
reading.
To-day she was out of spirits, and came to the library for some relief from
those vaguely painful thoughts that had oppressed her lately. The room was
so little affected by my lady's butterfly guests that she made sure of
having it all to herself this afternoon, when the voices and laughter of
the croquet-players, floating in at the open windows, told her that the
sport was still at its height.
She went into the room, and stopped suddenly a few paces from the doorway.
A gentleman was standing before the wide empty fireplace, where there was
a great dog-stove of ironwork and brass which consumed about half a ton of
coal a day in winter; a tall, ponderous-looking man, with his hands behind
him, glancing downward with cold gray eyes, but not in the least degree
inclining his stately head to listen to Lady Laura Armstrong, who was
seated on a sofa near him, fanning herself and prattling gaily after her
usual vivacious manner.
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