The large open space between the house and the fir plantation had once
been laid out as an Italian garden at the cost of much time and money,
but Sir Horace Fewbanks had lacked the taste or money to keep it up, and
had allowed it to become a luxuriant wilderness, though the sloping
parterres and the centre flowerbeds still retained traces of their former
beauty. The small lake in the centre, spanned by a rustic hand-bridge,
was still inhabited by a few specimens of the carp family--sole survivors
of the numerous gold-fish with which the original designer of the garden
had stocked the lake.
Sir Horace Fewbanks had rented Riversbrook as a town house for some years
before his death, having acquired the lease cheaply from the previous
possessor, a retired Indian civil servant, who had taken a dislike to the
place because his wife had gone insane within its walls. Sir Horace had
lived much in the house alone, though each London season his daughter
spent a few weeks with him in order to preside over the few Society
functions that her father felt it due to his position to give, and which
generally took the form of solemn dinners to which he invited some of his
brother judges, a few eminent barristers, a few political friends, and
their wives.
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