He had seen many of these great
houses in the course of his tramping; but he had never thought of them
before except as natural features in the landscape; the idea that people
could consider a gigantic building like that as much a home as the small
houses in which Mark had spent his life came over him now with a sense
of novelty.
"Ghastly affair, isn't it?" said the owner contemptuously. "I'd let it
stand empty rather than live in it myself. It reeks of my uncle's
medicine and echoes with his gouty groans. Besides what is there in it
that's really mine?"
Mark who had been thinking what an easy affair life must be for Sir
Charles was struck by his tone of disillusionment. Perhaps all people
who inherited old names and old estates were affected by their awareness
of transitory possession. Sir Charles could not alienate even a piece of
furniture. A middle-aged bachelor and a cosmopolitan, he would have
moved about the corridors and halls of that huge house with less
permanency than Lord Middlesborough who paid him so well to walk about
in it in his stead, and who was no more restricted by the terms of his
lease than was his landlord by the conditions of the entail. Mark began
to feel sorry for him; but without cause, for when Sir Charles came in
sight of Malford Lodge where he lived, he was full of enthusiasm.
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