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A Romance of Bidston Hill; Or, Love and Fortune, by F.a.
A Romance of Bidston Hill Or Love and Fortune by Fa Author:F. A Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. §N order that you, my reader, may understand the preceding chapter, it will be necessary that you should accompany me to that picturesque litt... more »le villa which adorns the entrance to High Street, in Crompton, and which rouses the envy of every passing connoisseur. It is built after the model of a Swiss chalet, and everything in connection with it, and its surrounding garden, indicate that the possessor is no ordinary personage, and one with ample means for gratifying luxurious and, perhaps, somewhat eccentric tastes. An entrance into the interior will confirm abundantly all that is suggested by the exterior. The walls are hung with the peculiar description of tapestry which one finds in the interior of chalets on the French coast, at Fecamp and Etretat for instance, and old French furniture, and articles of verttt beautify the variousrooms. Everywhere, however, there is an indescribable something which conveys to the mind the conviction that the occupier of the villa is eccentric in habit, and this conviction is in nowise weakened by an introduction to the personage who is the owner of all these objects of art and interest. Eccentric people are generally a burden, and a source of annoyance to those of their neighbours who have to submit to the vagaries of their eccentricities, but to this rule Mrs. Walton formed an exception. Her peculiar manners had, however, quite ostracised her, and in the whole town there were scarcely any who could speak in kind, or other terms, of her, and still less who could claim her as a friend. She had lived in the neighbourhood for many years, and had come, no one, with the exception of a relative who resided some short distance from her, knew whence. It was said by the gossips of the town that her husband had been a wealthy an...« less