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Updated: May 2, 2025
I was of a roving adventurous temperament, and I should have liked to go into the army. But where was the money to come from, to pay for my commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and working my way up, the social institutions of my country obliged the grandson of Lady Malkinshaw to begin military life as an officer and gentleman, or not to begin it at all.
When the honorable and gallant baronet, her father, died, he left the widowed Lady Malkinshaw with her worldly affairs in a curiously involved state. His mother always looked down upon him after this; but borrowed money of him also in order to show, I suppose, that her maternal interest in her son was not quite extinct.
"ALARMING ILLNESS OF LADY MALKINSHAW. We regret to announce that this venerable lady was seized with an alarming illness on Saturday last, at her mansion in town. The attack took the character of a fit of what precise nature we have not been able to learn. Her ladyship's medical attendant and near relative, Doctor Softly, was immediately called in, and predicted the most fatal results.
What was to be done with me in the way of education? If my father had consulted his means, I should have been sent to a cheap commercial academy; but he had to consult his relationship to Lady Malkinshaw; so I was sent to one of the most fashionable and famous of the great public schools. I will not mention it by name, because I don't think the masters would be proud of my connection with it.
Of course I started off directly to inquire if Lady Malkinshaw had had another narrow escape of dying before me. "Much better, sir," answered my grandmother's venerable butler, wiping his lips carefully before he spoke; "her ladyship's health has been much improved since her accident." "Accident!" I exclaimed. "What, another? Lately? Stairs again?"
My daughter went away this morning for change of air and scene, accompanied by my housekeeper. You look astonished, my dear sir let me frankly explain myself. While you were the respectable son of Doctor Softly, and grandson of Lady Malkinshaw, I was ready enough to let my daughter associate with you, and should not have objected if you had married her off my hands into a highly-connected family.
Can Lady Malkinshaw have taken a fresh lease of that impregnable vital tenement, at the door of which Death has been knocking vainly for so many years past? I debated with myself whether I should answer their pathetic appeal or not. Five minutes of desultory reading brought me unexpectedly to an explanation of the advertisement, in the shape of the following paragraph:
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