Still,
whether she was aware of the fact or not, her point of view was exactly
what the first Reuben Vanderpoel's had been on many very different
occasions. She had before her the task of dealing with facts and factors
of which at present she knew but little. Astuteness of perception,
self-command, and adaptability were her chief resources. She was ready,
either for calm, bold approach, or equally calm and wholly non-committal
retreat.
The perceptions she had brought with her filled her journey into Kent
with delicious things, delicious recognition of beauties she had before
known the existence of only through the reading of books, and the
dwelling upon their charms as reproduced, more or less perfectly,
on canvas. She saw roll by her, with the passing of the train, the
loveliness of land and picturesqueness of living which she had saved
for herself with epicurean intention for years. Her fancy, when detached
from her thoughts of her sister, had been epicurean, and she had been
quite aware that it was so. When she had left the suburbs and those
villages already touched with suburbanity behind, she felt herself
settle into a glow of luxurious enjoyment in the freshness of
her pleasure in the familiar, and yet unfamiliar, objects in the
thick-hedged fields, whose broad-branched, thick-foliaged oaks and
beeches were more embowering in their shade, and sweeter in their green
than anything she remembered that other countries had offered her,
even at their best.
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