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Updated: September 21, 2025
Unprejudiced persons might have called it an ugly, weakly little thing; indeed, at first there were such apprehensions of its dying that it had been baptized in a great hurry, "Henry Leaf Ascott," according to the mother's desire, which in her critical position nobody dared to thwart. Even at the end of fourteen days the "son and heir" was still a puling, sickly, yellow-faced baby.
Lyon's name for, time and absence having produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was seldom talked about now set Hilary thinking. "Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last. "Who? Mr. Lyon?" And Ascott, delighted' to escape into a fresh subject, became quite cheerful and communicative. "Oh, bless you! He wouldn't care for my going to him.
So Peter Ascott looked hard at Miss Selina, then into his hat, then, as good luck would have it, out of the window, where he caught sight of his carriage and horses. These revived his spirits, and made him recognize what he was Mr. Ascott, of Russell Square, addressing himself in the character of a benevolent patron to the Leaf family. "Glad to see you, Miss.
The difficulty how to word it, so as to catch his attention and yet escape publicity, was very great, especially as his initials were so common. Hundreds of "A. L.'s" might be wandering away from home, to whom all that she dared say to call Ascott back would equally apply. At last a bright thought struck her. Come. Saturday. 15."
Portlaw took the South Road." Malcourt grinned again, perfectly certain, now, of Portlaw's destination; and thinking to himself that unless his fatuous employer had been landed in a ditch somewhere, en route, he was by this time returning from Pride's Fall with considerable respect for Mrs. Ascott. As a matter of fact, Portlaw had already started on his way back. Mrs.
And again she felt the strong conviction, that whatever his father had been, or his mother, of whom they had heard nothing till she was dead, Ascott could not have lived all these years of his childhood and early boyhood with his three aunts at Stowbury without gaining at least some good, which might counteract the hereditary evil; as such evil can be counteracted, even as hereditary disease can be gradually removed by wholesome and careful rearing in a new generation.
And the little boy, in his pretty purple velvet frock and his prettier face, trotted across the room and put the money into poor Ascott's hand. He took it; and then to the astonishment of Master Henry, and the still greater astonishment of his father, lifted up the child and kissed him. "Young man, young fellow " "I see you don't know me, Mr. Ascott, and it's not surprising.
But that consolation was not so easy to Hilary. That they two should be wasting their youth apart, when just a little heap of yellow coins of which men like Mr. Ascott had such profusion would bring them together; and, let trials be many or poverty hard, give them the unutterable joy of being once more face to face and heart to heart oh, it was sore, sore!
Jones was a wide awake woman. She had not let lodgings for thirty years for nothing. Ere long she discovered, and took good care to inform Elizabeth of her discovery, that Mr. Ascott Leaf was what is euphuistically termed "in difficulties."
He buttoned his coat with a half sulky, half defiant air, left his supper untasted, and disappeared. It was midnight before he returned. His aunts were still sitting up, imagining all sorts of horrors, in an anxiety too great for words; but when Hilary ran to the door, with the natural "Oh, Ascott, where have you been?" he pushed her aside with a gesture that was almost fierce in its repulsion.
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