Mrs Rivers, making no sound, was standing in such mute misery as should have touched even a son.

To hear that one's oldest friend is probably in love with a stinking longhaired ass, and alternatively that the heir to an earldom is ready to lay the reversion of a coronet at her feet, is enough to make a chap think a bit.

There was on the writing-table a monstrous erection which had once been a receptacle for knives ... this case had been gutted and refitted and now contained four different sizes of notepaper of a hideous grey colour with what looked like hundreds of hairs mangled into it and the address stamped in heavy Gothic characters, coroneted envelopes to match, postcards, telegraph forms, and gummed wrappers for newspapers.

The sixth Earl of Pomfret, while at Oxford, came under the influence of the Gothic revival. His first sight of St. Pancras station, when on his way north for some shooting, was a revelation, and a family mansion was erected from plans prepared in the office of Sir Gilbert Scott. This pile, for no less a name is worthy of this vast medley of steep roofs, turrets, gables, and chimney stacks, crowned by a Victorian clock tower, took four years to build and is said to have cost its owner first and last as many hundred thousand pounds.

Lord Pomfret stopped on the threshold and glared suspiciously about him ... He was a tall elderly man with a soldierly carriage. His head was almost bald and his eyebrows very bushy. He had a heavy, old-fashioned moustache of a pale sandy colour ... Lord Pomfret knew every inch of his estates even better than Mr. Hoare the old agent.