Perhaps, after all, things were not to be so easy for him.
On either side he could see the stretches of sand, and here and there the long creeks of salt water.

As he came nearer to the house, the smell of the sea grew stronger, the tops of the trees were more bowed than ever, sand was blown everywhere across the hopeless flower-beds.

The house itself, suddenly revealed, was a grim weather-beaten structure, built on the very edge of a queer, barrow-like tongue of land which ended with the house itself.

The sea was breaking on the few yards of beach sheer below the windows.

To his right was a walled garden, some lawns and greenhouses; to the left, stables, a garage, and two or three labourer's cottages.