Summary

The story begins with the following quotation: "Oh, there is one, of course, but you'll never know it" (1). The narrator explains that the quote had come from Mary Boyne's cousin, Alida Stair, six months earlier during a discussion of the Lyng house in Dorsetshire that Mary and her husband Ned were thinking of buying. Mary is recalling the words of her cousin as she stands in the library of the very house that had been their topic of conversation. The story flashes back to that afternoon and the discussion between the Boynes and the Stairs. The Boynes, the narrator notes, are looking for an authentic Tudor home in southern England with the charm of a place that has been neglected. Ned Boyne says, "I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was thoroughly uncomfortable" (1). The family...