Excerpt from The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton: A Novel Ir was all settled one evening in the deep winter-time. Out side, a sharp east wind was whistling round the solitudes of Box Hill; the Mole, at the foot of our garden, as it stole stealtt through the darkness, crackled the flakes of ice that lay along its level banks; and away on Mickleham Downs - and on the far ther uplands towards the sea - the cold stars were shining down on a thin coating of snow. Indoors there was another story to tell; for the mistress of the house - Queen Titania, as we call her - a small person, with a calm, handsome, pale face, an abundance of black hair, big eyes that are occasionally somewhat cold and critical in look, and a certain magnificence of manner which makes you fancy her rather a tall and stately woman - has a trick of so filling her drawing room with dexterous traceries of grass and ferns, with plentiful flowers of her own rearing, and with a clouded glare of light, that, amidst the general warmth, the glow and perfume, and vari ety of brilliant colors, you would almost forget that the winter is chill and desolate and dark. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.