The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

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Title: Amabel Channice

Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Release Date: April 28, 2009 [EBook #28631]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Amabel Channice

BY

Anne Douglas Sedgwick

AUTHOR OF "THE RESCUE," "PATHS OF JUDGEMENT," "A FOUNTAIN
SEALED," ETC.

NEW YORK The Century Co. 1908

Copyright, 1908, by THE CENTURY CO.

_Published October, 1908_

THE DE VINNE PRESS

AMABEL CHANNICE

I

Lady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The
afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table,
though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam.
Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the
bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of
the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch
Augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. It was a grey stone
house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament
or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a
tame prospect. The stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond
the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left
the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat
meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. It was
a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. Lady Channice was fond of it.
Cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace,
and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent
ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. Her only
regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in
the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but
the house faced north, and it w