A place, in short, which, though not inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to ignore or resist.
Young Tom Verity, having no convenient armour-plating of stupidity, suffered its influence intimately as--looking about him with quick enquiring glances--he followed the man-servant across it between the dumpy pillars.

He felt self-conscious and disquieted, as by a smile of silent amusement upon some watchful elderly face.

So impressed, indeed, was he that, on reaching the door, he paused, letting the man pass on alone to announce him.

He wanted time in which to get over this queer sensation of shyness, before presenting himself to the company assembled, there, in the garden outside.
Yet he was well aware that the prospect out of doors--its amplitude of mellow sunlight and of space, its fair windless calm in which no leaf stirred--was far more attractive than the room in the doorway of which he thus elected to linger.
For the glass-door gave directly on to an extensive lawn, set out, immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds.

Away on the right a couple of grey-stemmed ilex trees--the largest in height and girth Tom had ever seen--cast finely vandyked and platted shadow upon the smooth turf.
Beneath them, garden chairs were stationed and a tea-table spread, at which four ladies sat--one, the elder, dressed in crude purple, the other three, though of widely differing ages and aspect, in light coloured summer gowns.
To the left of the lawn, a high plastered wall--masked by hollies, bay, yew, and at the far end by masses of airy, pink-plumed tamarisk--shut off the eastward view.