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Updated: June 27, 2025
That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to rebel against it. But she made herself so intensely and disagreeably officious that his patience was sorely tried. Her first act was to insist on a stately funeral.
The countess-dowager was furiously indignant when she heard of the intended sponsors its father and mother, and that cynical wretch, Thomas Carr! Val played the hospitable host; but there was a shadow on his face that his wife did not fail to see. It was the evening before the christening, and a very snowy evening too.
My goodness, Maude, how thin you look! I see what it is! you've been killing yourself in that racketing London. It's well I've come to take care of you." Maude went in, feeling that she could have taken care of herself, and listening to the off-hand explanations of the countess-dowager. "Kirton offended me," she said.
News that came up that morning from the Rectory did not tend to assuage her fears. The poor dairymaid had died in the night, and another servant, one of the men, was sickening. Even Lord Hartledon looked grave: and the countess-dowager wormed a half promise from him, in the softened feelings of the moment, that he would not visit the infected house.
She touched the knot on her bosom, and smiled back to him, her tone full of earnestness. "I would wear them always." And the countess-dowager, in her bedecked flounces and crimson feather, looked as if she would like to throw the knot and its wearer into the river, in the wake of the wager boats. After one or two false starts, they got off at last.
"Go and change your clothes!" was all she could reiterate. "Every minute you stand in them is fraught with danger. If you choose to die yourself, it's downright wicked to bring death to us. Oh, go, that I may get out of here." Lord Hartledon, to pacify her, left the room, and the countess-dowager rushed forth and bolted herself into her own apartments.
Ashton, were heard, as Lord Hartledon spoke again to the clergyman with irritable sharpness: "Why don't you begin?" And the countess-dowager fanned herself complacently, and neither she nor Maude cared for the absence of a groomsman. But Maude was not quite hardened yet; and the shame of her situation was tingeing her eyelids.
"I ought rather to apologize for intruding on you in the hour of your arrival." "Don't talk about intrusion," said Val. "You will never be an intruder in my house and Anne's smile is telling you the same " "Who's that, pray?" The interruption came from the countess-dowager. There she stood, near the door, in a yellow gown and green turban.
Gum, who was given to indirect answers. "I thought I was never going to see you again, Mary." "You could not expect to see me whilst the house was in its recent state," answered Mirrable. "We have been in a bustle, as you may suppose." "You've not had many staying there." "Only Mr. Carr; and he left to-day. We've got the old countess-dowager still."
I said Hart let me go on, and never came on himself; if that's a story, I'll swallow Dawkes's skiff and the sculls too." "You said he was in his room. You know you did." "I said I supposed so. It's usual for a man to go there, I believe, to get ready for dinner," added young Carteret, always ripe for a wordy war, in his antipathy to the countess-dowager.
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