Lady Bell, volume 1 (of 3)

“Now, child, I sha’n’t go any farther till her grace’s chair come. In the meantime I’ll tell you who are the tops in the drawing-room, and you may use your eyes for an honest pu...

Within three months from the date of the drawing-room, Lady Lucie Penruddock was dead and buried. Her dowager’s allowance had lapsed to the Squire Penruddock of the day. The sal...

The sound sleep of youth did much for Lady Bell. She awoke, comforted and refreshed in her closet,—furnished, Spartan-like, with checked linen and hard wood, the window looking...

Mrs. Die was a tall, gaunt, scarecrow of a woman, with wild black eyes which looked immense in size, and gleamed like coals of fire in their hollow sockets. Her face, which in y...

The family did not meet at dinner, the only meal at which they professed to gather, the day after Lady Bell came to St. Bevis’s. But on the following day she had again an opport...

She ransacked her trunks, and went into high dress—the extremely high dress of Lady Lucie’s order and era. Once more Lady Bell put on a peach-blossom coloured paduasoy, a muslin...

Squire Trevor wanted a wife. He had been long of setting about to supply the want; he was the keener in his search when he began it. His latent determination to exercise his pre...

All was utterly in vain, as futile as Lady Bell’s dressing herself in her dowdiest clothes with her shabbiest, least “setting” top-knots. If Lady Bell had only known in her yout...

According to the fashion of the time, though it was only two or three days’ journey to Trevor Court, Squire Trevor and his young wife made it a progress from one friend’s house...

Church was nearly the only place where Lady Bell saw the world, if seeing the world it could be called, when she was shut securely into a high moth-eaten brown pew, with Squire...

Goaded as Lady Bell was, and with the summer sunshine on the wane, and the autumn gloom approaching, she was ready to welcome any change. She heard with satisfaction, one aftern...

She was wildly at a loss how to proceed, but whatever plans crossed her mind, the idea never entered it to interfere by remonstrating with Squire Trevor. She knew by experience...

In the street Lady Bell set out walking rapidly—she dared not run—straight on in the opposite direction from her lodging. She had a conviction that she would get out of the town...

Arrived at the next market town to Peasmarsh, Lady Bell’s driver took her into the lamp-lit inn-yard; and when she pressed a recompense upon him, looked doubtfully at it, and th...

The prospect was not alluring to Lady Bell. It sounded like a horrible descent and social fall. She had not even heard of Mrs. Siddons, for Mrs. Abingdon had been the first lady...

“Will you be so good as to tell me the arrangements which you have made for me?” requested Lady Bell, remembering that as her money was lost, it was out of her power to undo the...

There was a whispered colloquy outside the door, succeeded by the entrance of a frank, open-faced young fellow, looking very comely in his green coat, and yet retaining a comica...

“Miss Kingscote,” said Lady Bell, very soberly and sadly, the next time that she sat netting a cherry net by the firelight, while her companion was dozing at her side. Neither o...

The white hoar frost which had given a fairy-like beauty to the old orchard trees of Nutfield had long melted away, and was replaced by the first powdering and fluttering of gre...