A daughter of strife

As long ago as the year 1710 there lived in London town a girl of the name of Anne Champion—a straw-plaiter by trade, and by hard fortune a beauty. Anne lived alone in a garret,...

The young man Richard Meadowes found a coach waiting for him round the corner of Yard’s Entry; he jumped in and bade the coachman drive home to St. James’ Square: a long drive,...

Meadowes did not pay much heed to where he was going as he left Yard’s Entry that Sunday afternoon. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he walked forward without aim or dire...

Till a few years ago the cottage was still standing where Anne Champion went to live at the bounty of Richard Meadowes. It stood on one of the crossways leading off the great we...

Perhaps it was because he felt the knot so obligingly tied by Simon Prior not quite impossible to untie, that Richard Meadowes took his marital obligations very lightly. He was...

‘Business,’ Meadowes explained to Anne a few days after this, ‘was taking him out of London.’ His absence, too, might be somewhat prolonged. He left ample means with his friend...

The day passed slowly for Anne after Dick had left. Her mind was troubled by vague half-formulated doubts. Had Dick spoken truly, or had he lied to save her pain? Surely, surely...

On a warm summer evening, some three weeks later, Richard Meadowes sat in the library of his town house thinking, perhaps not unnaturally, of Anne Champion and wondering where s...

Whenever the fever left her, Anne was trying to tell him something—something he would not listen to then. But at last one day, lying still and white, Anne suddenly spoke.

The war was ended, the Peace of Utrecht signed, and what remained of our armies after the twelve years’ conflict was free to come home once more. With the soldiers came back the...

Sebastian and Emma Shepley began their married life in a little house in Jermyn Street—‘small,’ as Emma would have described it, ‘but genteel.’ It would be impossible to exagger...

All observant (or is it only unobservant?) persons must surely have remarked that children seem to grow up suddenly in a night like Jack’s bean-stalk. The child that only yester...

Now so pleasant and easy is it to tread the primrose path, that after the first difficulty of being silent about her new playmate was got over, Carrie never thought about the ma...

‘Lord save us! Miss Carrie, what do you think? Master Phil hath near killed himself! I’m but just in from a message, and who should I meet but Mr. Peter, running like mad, and w...

‘Master Phil hath gone off to the country to establish his ’ealth,’ Patty said, and it seemed as though he would never return again, Carrie thought; for often as she sighed for...

Miss Caroline Shepley, up to the age of seventeen years, had perhaps, in her own way, lived as happy a life as it is granted to many young persons to live. She looked like it to...

The next day was the same, and the next and the next. On the fourth day, urged by despair, Carrie sat down to write to Sebastian the whole tale of her woe.

It was not the nature of Mr. Philip Meadowes (as may have been gathered from his talk) to be reticent upon any subject. He had the acumen, however, which most talkative persons...

‘Satan,’ says Dr. Watts, ‘finds mischief for idle hands to do.’ And Caroline Shepley, being very idle at Wynford, fell into mischief in a way which would have confirmed good Dr....

After Philip had gone, Richard Meadowes leaned back in his chair with closed eyes for a long time. The past was stirred in him by this quarrel. In the twenty years that had elap...

Carrie—unconscious, sleepy Carrie—laid herself down to rest that night in her four-post bed, and slept the dreamless sleep of youth and health, till the morning light stealing t...

Everything depended upon whether they could reach the half-way house at Wyntown before Dr. Shepley. For after Wyntown there were several roads which each led to town; but betwee...

Carrie and her father found it a little difficult to explain her sudden flight to Lady Mallow; but they patched up some sort of story that held together after a fashion, and bef...

There is no reckoning with the infinite possibilities for variation in human character, which is one of the reasons why all ‘theories’ of education are doomed to failure. Yet yo...

Carrie, as may be surmised, never spoke about Philip to her father. She was therefore rather surprised when one morning he passed her the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, and pointed to...

It would seem that this marriage was to cause sad feelings to more households than one; for not many days after Carrie and Sebastian had settled matters after this sad fashion,...

After the plain speaking which had passed between Richard Meadowes and his son, a readjustment of their relationships seemed necessary. It was not possible for them to keep up t...

In spite of her happiness Carrie made a very tearful bride. The parting from her father was exquisitely painful to her, and not all Phil’s endearments could at first bring a smi...

Simon Prior had come out to Fairmeadowes to beg. It was not the first time he had begged from Richard Meadowes, and he had little shame about doing it. He even assumed a slightl...

As time went on Society began to surmise that Philip Meadowes and his father were not upon the best of terms. The elder man seldom came to town, and when he did, never stayed at...

Carrie had sat up late that night waiting for Philip to come in, then she grew sleepy, went to bed, and fell asleep. But her sleep cannot have been very sound, for the heavy foo...

The Courts were crowded on the day that Philip Meadowes stood his trial at the Old Bailey. The case attracted a vast deal of attention in its day, and if all the cross-questioni...

The trial then was over. And it seemed indeed that before very long Philip Meadowes’ life too would be over. He who had laughed at imprisonment and laughed at trial could laugh...

In this moment of dismay Carrie’s heart had turned to her father, as the needle turns to the north, with a tenacity of trustfulness that a thousand quarrels would never shake. H...

I never enter an old house without wishing it had a voice and could tell me all its stories and secrets; but the secrets of Newgate would be such as none of us would listen to w...

Carrie, Philip, and Sebastian formed a curious little household for the next few weeks. Sebastian, who was first a doctor and then a man, deferred his judgment upon Philip’s cas...