Melincourt Or Sir Oran HauntTon Author:Thomas Love Peacock General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1896 Original Publisher: Macmillan and Co. Subjects: History / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy t... more »he General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III HYPOCON HOUSE ANTHELIA had received intimations from various quarters of similar intentions on the part of various individuals, not less valuable than Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the scale of moral utility ; and though there was not one among them for whom she felt the slightest interest, she thought it would be too uncourteous in a pupil of chivalry, and too inhospitable in the mistress of an old English castle, to bar her gates against them. At the same time she felt the want of a lord seneschal to receive and entertain visitors so little congenial to her habits and inclinations : and it immediately occurred to her that no one would be more fit for this honourable office, if he could be prevailed on to undertake it, than an old relation -- a medium, as it were, between cousin and great-uncle ; who had occasionally passed a week or a month with her father at Melincourt. The name of this old gentleman was Hippy -- Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, of Hypocon House, in the county of Durham. He was a bachelor, and his character exhibited a singular compound of kind-heartedness, spleen, and melancholy, which governed him by turns, and sometimes in such rapid succession that they seemed almost co-existent. To him Anthelia determined on sending an express, with a letter entreating him to take on himself, for a short time, the superintendence of Melincourt Castle, and giving as briefly as possible her reasons for the request. In pursuance of this determination, old Peter Gray,...« less