Presently we turned off the main road and curved for a mile between high hedges; then suddenly, in a distant fold of the downs, a vision in cream-colored stone broke through heavy parkland trees. Woburn, who had not seen it before, joined me in a little gasp of admiration. “You were intended to do that,” said Rainier. “In fact the architect and roadbuilder conspired about it two hundred years ago. My brother Julian, who fancied himself as a phrase maker, once called it ‘a stucco prima donna making a stage entrance.’ Now, you see, it goes out of sight.” Intervening upland obscured the house for
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