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Lord Rosmore, whose way with a woman was pronounced irresistible, had declared her adorable, but impossible, and Judge Marriott had promised Lady Bolsover a very handsome gratuity if she could persuade her niece to favour him and become his wife.
There are those who are so intent upon living that they have little time to think. Lady Bolsover was of these. The hour that did not hold some excitement in it wearied her and made her petulant. Her husband, dead these ten years, had been amongst the enthusiastic welcomers of Charles at his Restoration, and his wife had from first to last been a well-known figure in the Court of the Merry Monarch.
"John Holies, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsover, with its majestic square keeps; his also is Haughton, in Nottinghamshire, where a round pyramid, made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in the centre of a basin of water.
If in one sense Lady Bolsover had to admit failure with regard to her plans concerning her niece, in another direction she had achieved considerable success, for since the advent of Barbara Lanison her own favour had been courted on all sides, and her house in St. James's Square had become a little Court in itself.
It was a fight with the spectre of death and the spectre won the contest. She was immensely rich; but could not number a real friend in the world. Chatsworth, Hardwick, Oldcotes, Bolsover and Worksop Manor were either built or partly built under her auspices.
To you, Gammon, I could not lie; I respect you, I admire you, in spite of the great distance between us in education and habits of mind. If I thought you accused me of falsehood, my dear Gammon, it would distress me deeply. Assure me that you don't. I am easily put out to-day. The death of poor Bolsover my friend before he succeeded to the title. And that reminds me.
"I am waiting for my aunt, Lady Bolsover," she said, the colour mounting to her cheeks under his steady gaze, and then, suddenly anxious that he should not think evil of her, she added: "I did not want to come. It was horrible." "Your aunt must have missed you," he said, glancing round the almost empty lobby, for the crowd had poured out into the street by this time.
Benson, holding on by a chair back, smiled at him genially. "Often wondered where you went to after you left Peshawur, old man. Though you got the sack for it, it wasn't your fault the ghazees broke our line that night. Said so to the Colonel can see him now, sitting there, looking very sick and cut up, and Bolsover, acting adjutant, blinking like an owl." "Be quiet!"
Something evil hung like a veil over its beauty, an evil that must surely touch her if she remained there. She was impelled to run away from it, yet whither could she go? Could she explain the evil? Could she put into words what she was afraid of? The world would laugh at her, even as Mrs. Dearmer did, or label her a wench of Puritan stock, as her aunt, Lady Bolsover, was inclined to do.
"Judge Marriott's wit horrible!" exclaimed Lady Bolsover. "Pray do not say so in company, or you will be taken for a fool." "I meant the trial the whole thing. Why did we go?" "Would you be altogether out of the fashion, Barbara?" "Such fashion, yes, I think so." "Ah, that's the drawback of living in the country," was the answer.
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