Camiola a Girl with a Fortune Author:Justin McCarthy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CAMIOLA. The Rector's house was the most considerable dwelling in Fitzurseham, leaving, of course, the lonely Fitzurse House out of the questi... more »on. The Rector's house was a lofty, spacious, Georgian building of the least picturesque order, standing in all its unadorned ugliness behind low stone walls, iron railings, and a great iron gate surmounted by a gas-lamp. On either side of the gate, with its modern innovation of a lamp, were the iron extinguishers which told of the days when the footmen still carried the links to light their master's way. The Honourable and Rev. St. George Lisle, the rector, did not come to his house in Fitzurseham very often, or stay there long when he did come. He hadexcellent curates, who did the work for him in what he had long been accustomed to consider a very satisfactory way. But he was neither a very rich man nor a lazy man, and he had church business to attend to in the west-end parish, where he usually lived. He was a tall, pulpy, willowy sort of man ; he had an oblong, florid face, lightly thatched with yellowish hair. His eyes were of a mild blue, and were protected by moony spectacles. He was a well-meaning and an earnest man, something of a scholar in a certain way, very kindly, and more than merely willing to do good. But he was puzzled by most of the problems of the living world. Troublesome questions came up in his path and staggered him. He went through life like a short-sighted and awkward man trying to make rapid way along a crowded street, jostled here, jolted there, fancying he recognizes a passing face, and as he tries to look after it shaken out of all dignity by hurrying passengers and put much in peril by hansom cabs. People commonly took him for self-conceited and cold, when hewas only shy and awkward. He found ...« less