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Updated: June 29, 2025
Southward from Great Ancoats Street, lies a great, straggling, working- men's quarter, a hilly, barren stretch of land, occupied by detached, irregularly built rows of houses or squares, between these, empty building lots, uneven, clayey, without grass and scarcely passable in wet weather. The cottages are all filthy and old, and recall the New Town to mind.
He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside. "Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was. Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of the story for granted no doubt on Fontenoy's information said a few words about the renewal of the difficulty.
And Maxwell's feeling for his father, and for his father's friends, was of such a kind that his guardian's duties had gone deep with him. He had done his best for the boy, and since Ancoats had reached his majority his ex-guardian had still kept him anxiously in mind. Of late indeed Ancoats had troubled himself very little about his guardian, or his guardian's anxieties.
What she said showed him that in his conversations with Ancoats that young man had been talking round and about his own case a good deal! and when she paused he said drily: "Poor Mrs. Allison! But, you know, there must be some crumples in the rose-leaves of the great." She looked at him with a momentary astonishment. "Why should one think of her as 'great'? Would not any mother suffer?
It was so evident the girl's whole nature thrilled to the approaching step. She turned her head towards Ancoats, as though against her will, her tall form drawn erect, in unconscious tension. Ancoats's quick eyes ran over the group. "He thinks we have been talking about him," was Betty's quick reflection, which was probably not far from the truth.
Maxwell, in some anxiety, caught his wife's arm, and made her pause till his eye should be once more certain of the path. Meanwhile Ancoats and Tressady walked quickly back to the lawn, Ancoats talking and laughing with unusual vigour. The Maxwells did not hurry themselves. As they emerged from the wood Marcella slipped her hand into her husband's. It was her characteristic caress.
Moreover, he was again affectionate to his mother, and occasionally even went to church with her. The instincts of the English aristocrat reappeared amid the accomplishments of the petit-maitre, and poor Mrs. Allison's spirits revived. Then the golden-haired Lady Madeleine was asked to stay at Castle Luton. When she came Ancoats devoted himself with extraordinary docility.
Now, however, he gruffly told her to go next day without fail, and added some abuse of her for not having been before. The little outward impulse of her father's speech gave Mary the push which she in this instance required; and accordingly, timing her visit so as to avoid Jem's hours at home, she went the following afternoon to Ancoats.
"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said quietly. Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey. "We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes Sir George." Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look.
"Because she was fagged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness," said Marcella, not, however, without embarrassment, as Betty saw, "and I want you to be kind to her." "Reasons one and two no reasons at all," said Betty, meditating; "and the third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?"
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