Of course, after he had passed the border into the realm of N4, Franklin Marmion speedily came to look upon her visits as the merest commonplaces.
But as the unhappy Lady Alicia will have no part to play in the action of this narrative, her little story must be accepted as a perhaps excusable digression.
There were about four acres of comfortably wooded land about the house, of which nearly an acre had formed the pleasaunce of the old lodge.

This was now a beautifully-kept modern garden, with a broad, gently-sloping lawn, whose turf had been growing more and more velvety year by year for over three centuries, and divided from it by a low box-hedge was another, levelled up and devoted to tennis and new-style croquet.

The Old Lawn, as it was called, sloped away from a broad verandah which ran the whole length of the central wing and formed the approach to the big drawing-room and dining-room, and a cosy breakfast-room of early Georgian style, and these, with her study and "snuggery" and bedroom on the next floor, formed the peculiar domain of Miss Nitocris.
She and the Professor were just sitting down to an early breakfast on the morning of the garden-party, which had been arranged for the day but one after the arrival of the Huysmans, when the post came in.

There were a good many letters for both, for each had many interests in life.

The Professor only ran his eye over the envelopes and then put the bundle aside for consideration in the solitude of his own den.