Chapter LXXX Conclusion

THE Senator for Mikewa,—whose name we have taken for a book which might perhaps have been better called ‘The Chronicle of a Winter at Dillsborough’—did not stay long in London after the unfortunate close of his lecture. He was a man not very pervious...

Chapter LXXIV Benedict

LADY PENWETHER declared to her husband that she had never seen her brother so much cowed as he had been by Miss Trefoil’s visit to Rufford. It was not only that he was unable to assert his usual powers immediately after the attack made...

Chapter LXII ‘We Shall Kill Each Other’

LADY AUGUSTUS, as she was driven back to Orchard Street, and as she remained alone during the rest of that day and the next in London, became a little afraid of what she had done. She began to think how she should communicate her...

Chapter LIX The Last Effort

WHEN Mary reached her home she was at once met by her stepmother in the passage with tidings of importance. ‘He is upstairs in the drawing-room,’ said Mrs. Masters. Mary, whose mind was laden with thoughts of Reginald Morton, asked who was...

Chapter LVI ‘Now What Have You Got to Say?’

IT may be a question whether Lord Augustus Trefoil or Lord Rufford looked forward to the interview which was to take place at the duke’s mansion with the greater dismay. The unfortunate father whose only principle in life had been that of avoiding trouble...

Chapter LIV Arabella Again at Bragton

ARABELLA TREFOIL had adhered without flinching to the purpose she had expressed of going down to Bragton to see the sick man. And yet at that very time she was in the midst of her contest with Lord Rufford. She was aware...

Chapter L ‘In These Days One Can’t Make a Man Marry’

THIS was going on while Lord Rufford was shooting in the neighbourhood of Dillsborough; and when the letter was being put into its envelope at the lodgings in Orchard Street, his lordship was just sitting down to dinner with his guests at the Bush....

Chapter XXXIII The Beginning of Persecution

WHEN Mary Masters got up on the morning after her arrival, she knew that she would have to endure much on that day. Everybody had smiled on her the preceding evening, but the smiles were of a nature which declared themselves to be preparatory...

Chapter XXVI Give Me Six Months

THERE was a great deal of trouble and some very genuine sorrow in the attorney’s house at Dillsborough during the first week in December. Mr. Masters had declared to his wife that Mary should go to Cheltenham, and a letter was written to Lady...

Chapter XXIII Poor Caneback

A CLOSER intimacy will occasionally be created by some accident, some fortuitous circumstance, than weeks of ordinary intercourse will produce. Walk down Bond Street in a hailstorm of peculiar severity and you may make a friend of the first person you meet, whereas you...