She went about paying visits, and in the course of conversation gave people to understand that Mr.Tyson's residence in Drayton had been something of a concession on his part from the first.

So large a land-owner had a great many tiresome claims and obligations, as well as a position to keep up in his county; but there could be no doubt that Nevill was quite lost in the place, and that the true sphere of his activity was town.

Mrs.
Wilcox's taste for vague and ample phrases was extremely convenient at times.
If his wife was the last person to be consulted in Tyson's arrangements, it may be supposed that no great thought was taken for his son and heir.
Not that the little creature would have been much affected by any change in his surroundings; he was too profoundly indifferent to the world.

It had taken all the delicious tumult of the spring, all the flaming show of summer, to move him to a few pitiful smiles.

He had none of the healthy infant's passion and lusty grasp of life; he seemed to touch it as he had touched his mother's breasts, delicately, tentatively, with some foregone fastidious sense of its illusion.