Excerpt from The Wages of Sin: A Novel<br><br>The Rector had refused to have any tea. He leaned back in another wicker chair, his legs crossed, his coat thrown open, and his thumbs stuck in the armholes Of his waistcoat, surveying the scene before him with an expres sion Of half-contemptuous though not unkindly amusement. Sometimes his eyes wandered from the group in the fore ground to a Wide stretch of Open park, dotted with fallow deer, lying north and west below the terraced garden. The park clipped to the left towards a wooded stream in the hollow, and swept up again into breezy hillside, red. And yellow with withering bracken. Beyond it the sea, crossed by wandering tide-lines of the palest azure, Spread away calm and Oily, under a sky Of filmy White cloud, to the high faint line Of the horizon.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.