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Updated: May 6, 2025
Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look in for half-an-hour this evening." Hedges had to go on his way also, for it was close upon the countess-dowager's dinner-hour, at which ceremony he must attend. Putting his best foot forward, he walked at more than an ordinary pace, and overtook a gentleman almost at the very door of Hartledon.
The rain poured down on the Monday morning; and Lord Hartledon stood at the window of the countess-dowager's sitting-room one she had unceremoniously adopted for her own private use smoking a cigar, and watching the clouds. Any cigar but his would have been consigned to the other side the door. Mr.
One has need of a double portion of tonics in a time like this." The countess-dowager's alarms were not feigned no, nor exaggerated. She had an intense, selfish fear of any sort of illness; she had a worse fear of death. In any time of public epidemic her terrors would have been almost ludicrous in their absurdity but that they were so real.
Never, since she was thus thrown upon her own resources, had the countess-dowager's lucky star been in the ascendant as it had been this season, for she contrived to fasten herself upon the young Lord Hartledon, and secure a firm footing in his town-house.
An accident has happened to Lord Hartledon, ma'am, and these men have brought him home." "He he's not dead?" asked the old woman, in changed tones. Alas! poor Lord Hartledon was indeed dead. The Irish labourers, in passing near the mill, had detected the body in the water; rescued it, and brought it home. The countess-dowager's grief commenced rather turbulently.
Their relationship sanctioned their being now much together, and the Lady Maude lost her heart to him. Would it bring forth fruit, this scheming of the countess-dowager's, and Maude's own love?
"Poor Maude!" he sighed. "Her mother forgave me before she died " "She knew it, then?" "Yes. She learned " Sounds of drumming on the door, and the countess-dowager's voice, stopped Lord Hartledon. "I had better face her," he said, as he unlocked it. "She will arouse the household." Wild, intemperate, she met him with a volley of abuse that startled Lady Hartledon.
Of course any honourable woman any woman with a spark of justice in her heart would have also forbidden all intercourse with Lady Maude. The countess-dowager's policy lay in the opposite direction. But Lord Hartledon remained in London, utterly oblivious to the hints and baits held out for his return to Calne.
Perhaps on no one with the exception of Percival did the death of Lord Hartledon leave its effects as it did on Lady Kirton and her daughter Maude. To the one it brought embarrassment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic.
Now and again a piteous begging-letter would come from one or the other, which she railed at and scolded over, and bade Maude answer. Her eldest son, Lord Kirton, had married some four or five years ago, and since then the countess-dowager's lines had been harder than ever.
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