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Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936

"The Man Who Knew Too Much"

Fisher.
"Well, I've known it pretty cold before now in Italy and even in
India, up on the Himalayan slopes. The ice on our own little round
pond will be quite cozy by comparison."
Juliet Bray was an attractive lady with dark hair and eyebrows and
dancing eyes, and there was a geniality and even generosity in her
rather imperious ways. In most matters she could command her
brother, though that nobleman, like many other men of vague ideas,
was not without a touch of the bully when he was at bay. She could
certainly command her guests, even to the extent of decking out the
most respectable and reluctant of them with her mediaeval
masquerade. And it really seemed as if she could command the
elements also, like a witch. For the weather steadily hardened and
sharpened; that night the ice of the lake, glimmering in the
moonlight, was like a marble floor, and they had begun to dance and
skate on it before it was dark.
Prior's Park, or, more properly, the surrounding district of
Holinwall, was a country seat that had become a suburb; having once
had only a dependent village at its doors, it now found outside all
its doors the signals of the expansion of London. Mr. Haddow, who
was engaged in historical researches both in the library and the
locality, could find little assistance in the latter.


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